Robson Sharuko-Editor
IN Spain, an unsolicited KISS brought down a powerful leader of the country’s Football Association and destroyed his career in the game.
Here in Zimbabwe, an attempt to forcibly KISS a female member of the Mighty Warriors coaching staff could destroy the career of the team’s finest coach.
Both Luis Rubiales, the shamed ex-boss of the Spanish FA, and Shadreck Mlauzi, the shamed boss of the Mighty Warriors, are now facing criminal charges.
An unsolicited KISS brought down a powerful leader of the country’s Football Association and destroyed his career in the game
Rubiales’ spectacular fall from grace was triggered by his outrageous decision to kiss footballer Jenni Hermoso on the lips, against her wishes, on August 20 after the country’s triumph in the FIFA
Women’s World Cup.
Hermoso’s revelations that the kiss was non-consensual, a day after the celebrations, sparked a chain of events which resulted in Rubiales being suspended by FIFA amid a furious global backlash.
Rubiales’s mother, Ángeles Béjar, locked herself in a church and began a hunger strike in protest against what she felt was an unfair treatment of her son.
However, this did little to stop the tsunami of anger against his actions and the controversy even spilled into the United Nations Human Rights office, which threw its backing behind Hermoso.
On September 8, Spanish prosecutor Marta Durantes Gil filed a High Court complaint for sexual assault and coercion against Rubiales and, two days later, he publicly announced his resignation.
“Yes, I have to do it because I cannot continue my work,” he said.
A month later, this country finds itself having to deal with its own version of the drama which brought down a powerful FA boss and could even land him in jail.
Shadreck Mlauzi, the only local coach to take a national football team to the Olympics, spent two nights behind bars this week facing indecent assault charges.
He was granted US$300 bail on Wednesday.
Mlauzi allegedly forcibly grabbed a member of the Mighty Warriors technical staff by the shoulders and pulled her towards him in an attempt to kiss her.
The incident happened on September 26, while the team was in camp in Harare. He is also accused of having demanded that he massage him.
Then, on October 4, at the Garden Court Hotel in Johannesburg, Mlauzi is alleged to have grabbed the woman’s backside without her consent.
The high-profile nature of Mlauzi’s standing in the game, especially after his appearance at the 2016 Olympics, has seen his story appearing in newspapers like The Guardian of the United Kingdom.
In a football world still reeling from the Rubiales’s KISS OF DEATH, this could be the end of Mlauzi’s coaching career, even if the courts clear him.