A dream Champions League final!

Most of my friends are jubilating. What they dreamed of has come to pass; Real Madrid is 99 percent likely to meet Barcelona in the Champions League final in Wembley. Talking of which, my friends are also glad that England has been finally put in its right place in the world of football.

Friday, April 12, 2013
Ivan R. Mugisha

Most of my friends are jubilating. What they dreamed of has come to pass; Real Madrid is 99 percent likely to meet Barcelona in the Champions League final in Wembley. Talking of which, my friends are also glad that England has been finally put in its right place in the world of football.With no team in the quarter finals, rhetoric is going on that England simply can’t play football- and that the Premier League is a weakling compared to La Liga and Bundesliga. This rhetoric is also supported by none other than the UEFA chief himself- Michel Platini.Well, as an English football fan, I have spent the whole of this season eating humble pies- and cannot simply wait for another season of football to begin.Back to the dream final; I don’t know how they did it, but the usually random Champions League draw went berserk this time round.It forsook all kinds of randomness to throw in draws that only the UEFA chiefs and football promoters would have died for. That is- a draw that ensures Barca and Madrid avoid each other until they meet in the final.If it is not rigging or fixing, then it is luck; but luck is usually not this perfect, so I will let the readers to debate which it is.Barca a one-man team… so what?I kept listening to this hullabaloo about Barcelona being a one-man team (we know which player they are talking about in this case), and wondered why this should even be a point of discussion- until I entered one myself. Yes Barca is a one-man team; but so what? Which club isn’t? Manchester is; without Van Persie they would have been toothless this season. Real Madrid is; without Ronaldo they would have been average, Bayern is; without Mario Mandzukic, they are weak. So to end this debate, let us look at those clubs I have mentioned, take out that talismanic player and pit them against a Messi-less Barca…see which will win. By all standards, Barcelona would still stand out and have the same power going forward with the likes of Iniesta and Fabregas. Most teams develop their game around their best player- so this thing of Barca being a one-man team should never be used as some form of criticism because it exposes ignorance.FIFA rankings expose AmavubiI am more of a writer on international soccer but I couldn’t let this pass by. The latest FIFA rankings paint a gloomy picture for Rwanda’s football and I wonder whether FERWAFA has a strategy to get us out of this hole.Whereas we boast strides in other departments like ICT, FIFA thinks we are the worst football country in East Africa.  Even countries I expected we could be better than like Burundi and Sudan are way above us in the FIFA rankings. My question is- what happened? Why isn’t there a single development that I can be proud of in football? For as long as I remember, Amavubi fans have had nothing to celebrate about, despite going to the stadium in numbers to scream their lungs out, only to leave with sad faces.I want to read some positive news in the coming days and months; therefore, I hope that Micho, instead of crushing juicy rumors about his link to the Uganda Cranes job, first figures out something worth celebrating for Rwandan soccer fans.