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Whose hands are clean?

Two pieces of sporting news caught my attention this week and both had to do with football and money. First, it was reported that the Malawi National Council of Sports (MNCS) will not be increasing allowances for the Flames any time soon. I was still trying to digest this when we got the not-so-surprising announcement that Carlsberg Malawi Limited will, after this season, no longer sponsor either of the two footballing icons, Big Bullets and Mighty Wanderers.

I must say I found the sentiments as expressed by MNCS executive secretary George Jana very amusing. He argues that the Flames do not deserve an extra penny over what they get currently because of the team’s continued underperformance. He goes on to make the interesting argument that bonuses are paid as a result of recording more profits than normal, something that cannot be easily determined in football.

There is no doubt that our national soccer team has brought us more shame than fame over the last few years and it is in everyone’s interest that the status quo changes for the better. I would like to believe that there are different roles that different people have to play to ensure that we become a football force. There are roles for the players, the technical panel, administrators and several others.

What you get from Jana is that the players have not done their part, which is easy to understand given the performance and results on the pitch. Can he say with a straight face that other people, including his own council, have done their part to ensure that the team does well? The old saying reminds us that he who seeks must come with clean hands. His argument would have made sense if council had done everything to ensure that the team delivers.

I also think that the argument relating to profits is only a problem with terminology and the way player rewards are structured. This idea of linking what players get needs to be revised because it simply does not make sense to me. I am made to understand that players get a certain amount for a win, something around half for a draw and almost nothing for a loss. Really? Since Jana is bringing in a company set-up, this is not on.

I would like to believe that just like the players get a set figure for training, there should be a fixed figure for playing a game for the team, be it a club or national team, whether they win or lose just like people are paid per day in companies regardless of what they do. Anything they get for winning should be over and above this and can be rightly called a bonus. To give players nothing after losing is exploitation in my view.

Jana makes another interesting point when he argues that the national team is not a money-generating entity, but an opportunity to display one’s patriotism. What he is not saying is that football is a means for living for those that are in it and one does not need to be a footballer to show their patriotism. Indeed, patriotism is a choice and if this were all about patriotism, players would not be sanctioned for declining to play for their national team.

I, therefore, submit that if Jana’s remarks were meant to jolt our players to up their game, they may just have achieved the opposite effect. The players may have let the country down, but they have not been alone in that regard. Council itself is not clean.

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