First cut

BOITUMELO TSHIMOLOGO | Friday February 12, 2010 00:00

Here is proof that there is no short-cut to success. Tommorrow, Gaborone United faces Orlando Pirates in the African Champions League.

This is a mark of success. Everyone aspires to be there with the top clubs of Africa. And when one plays in any domestic league, the ambition for teams that plan and know how to execute their plans, is to win the title and go into Africa.

I want to believe GU always knew they could be in this position, challenging the likes of Pirates in competitions such as this. As to whether they can go all the way, is another matter. I do however think the Reds have the discipline and ambition to want to do that.

African club competitions are a jungle. Even the most terrifying animals are not always assured they could easily gulp down the less strong.  Pirates are not a big name in Africa. I know they claimed the glory back in 1995 when they beat ASEC Mimosas of Abidjan to be crowned kings of Africa. The star atop their badge attests to that. But, like Botswana teams, South Africans have never been good in Africa.

For GU, it has been slightly different. They have envisioned themselves playing in Africa-hence my position that theirs was a plan. A plan they should be proud of. 

Not long ago, I posited that GU had no business playing in Africa. Playing in Africa can be a logistical nightmare; a resource draining adventure. It can divert a club’s attention from the domestic league and create problems. What with GU faltering from one step to the next and languishing at the middle of the table?   Surely the Reds must be showing the local football fraternity that their annexation of the title last season was not a fluke.

They had worked and planned for it and results in preceding years had indicated loads of progress.

If they are not careful, victory against Pirates, while a welcome result, could become an even bigger ruin to them in the be Mobile Premier League.  But someone informs me, even if GU were to go all the way, their plan is intact. I hear the Reds have assembled a team that can cope with the rigours of both African and the domestic programmes.

Who between GU and Pirates is a better team? Often when a Botswana team ventures into such territory, the fervour of football loving people is to establish if any improvement in the standard of our game has been realised.  In the past, South African teams proved too much for their Botswana counterparts. And what more, Batswana often think football standards in South Africa is not what is portrayed in the media. But my take is that, if, even if the standard in South Africa is way below as some might reckon, we, by the same token, are even shoddier.

We will be most keen tomorrow to see what happens between GU and the visitors. I do honestly think Batswana, no more as fanatical about South African football as was the case in the past, will be rooting for the home team to pull through. I guess GU fancies their chances.

When Kelisitse Gilika embarked on a plan to return his team to the top some four years ago, it sounded a bit too ambitious. Some thought he was going on about GU reclaiming glory merely to celebrate the promotion of his team into the elite league after languishing in the gutters of Division One for almost five years. But here we are.

We have just been given smoke gun evidence- there is no success without planning. Gilika’s three-year development plan, has catapulted the Reds into a team that Africa will hear about.

The most delighted will be the club’s fallen heroes, who, in their life, would have loved to see their teams doing well and meeting the top names in Africa. Surely, where GU came from in our football, they should be a regular feature in African football! Wrong?

I do not know how much strides we have covered in our football development. Our teams playing in Africa - and remember there is Santos playing Costa De Sol of Mozambique - should in some way provide an answer. For GU, they first played in Africa in 1986 but saw their hopes dashed by Lesotho team Matlama United courtesy of Bomba Matete’s goal. The second sojourn in Africa was after 1990 where Denver Sundowns of Swaziland accounted for the Reds’s exit.

But back in 1994 when the Reds met Ferrovairo of Mozambique in the CAF Cup Winners’ Cup, Mlungisi Kopi’s strike in Gaborone was met by a ferocious blitz by the hosts in Maputo and GU eventually bowed out 1-2 on aggregate.  

Well, the jury is still out. Is there any significant development in our football that we can all be proud about? I still, even at the risk of being labelled unpatriotic, think we have a very long way to go.

I just hope the Reds will prove critics wrong and send Pirates packing. It will, in my opinion, start with Batswana thronging the UB Stadium to give them support tomorrow. I wish both Santos and GU well in their African adventure. I hope it is something we can all nicely reminisce about in future.