By MICHAEL ORIEDO
What would AFC Leopards, Gor Mahia and Kenya Sevens Rugby, among others, be without ardent fans? Will the teams perform as splendid as they do without their huge fan bases?
Fans are a necessary evil and have a way of making teams perform and stay in top form during leagues, if the current Gor Mahia performance is anything to go by.
The team, thanks to fans, who were eager for results and instigated the sacking of their former coach Cameroonian Anaba Awono, has woken up from deep slumber and regained winning ways. Gor, as sports commentators say, are now ‘seeing’ the opponents’ goal.
But as expected, fans can be a menace. Here, we are not talking about those who love rioting.
Our focus is on those who use ingenious ways to help their teams win. For instance, in the case of football, they will throw a ball in the pitch and confuse players or blow a whistle signalling a player is offside or the game is over when it is not.
On April 30, Italy football powerhouse Lazio FC found itself on the receiving end after a rogue fan blew a whistle and confused their players that the game was over.
The game was in the last-minute, according to UK’s Metro Sport and Lazio was trailing Udinese one-nil.
Lazio “threw everything forward — including goalkeeper Federico Marcehtti — after winning a corner in the dying seconds of the match,” reports the paper.
Udinese defenders cleared the corner and its players moved up field.
“A lone Lazio defender seemed to be in control of the situation until a whistle from the stands of Udinese fans convinced both himself and the goalkeeper Federico Marchetti that the game was over,” said Metro Sports.
However, the referee signalled the match to continue and Udinese player Robert Pereyra picked the loose ball and spiralled it into Lazio’s unmanned goal.
Chaos erupted in the pitch as Lazio players protested against the goal.
“A scuffle broke out, which resulted in a sending-off for Andre Dias, a booking for Lionel Scaloni and a possible retrospective ban for Marchetti, who manhandled the referee on his way off the pitch,” adds the paper.
Udinese players believed Lazio’s protest was uncalled for and the fake whistle did not matter since the game was almost over.
“Pereyra perhaps realised the whistle wasn’t from the referee. In all honesty, I’m not sure what the rule book states in such cases, but we would have won the game anyway,” midfielder Giampiero Pinzi said.
But it’s not only the fans who engage in such mischief. A US baseball team accused their opponents’ reserve player of blowing a whistle to confuse them.
According to NBC Sports, Titans accused the Saints player of blowing the whistle in the December 12, 2011 match several times to confuse them.
“During the game, we heard this whistle blowing, but they weren’t stopping the game, they just kept playing. They were loud enough for me to hear it on the microphone. They were all trying to figure out why play continued. I asked them if they knew where it came from and they pointed at the Saints bench. Nobody saw it, but it was pretty loud and it was definitely a whistle,” said an official.
Barcelona goalkeeper Jose Pinto at one time was also involved in the ‘whistle-blowing’ saga during a Champions League game with FC Copenhagen, which lost 2-0. In the 2010 match, Copenhagen forward Cesar Santin was running with the ball towards the goal but after hearing a whistle, which apparently was not from the referee, stopped.
The game went on but it was later established it’s the goalkeeper who blew the whistle.
