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Zimbabwe's Dynamos could be football's biggest winners this season

If the Glamour Boys of one of the world's most chaotic countries win the African Champions League, it will bring them glory and maybe even a team bus
Zimbabwe Dynamos goalkeeper Mania Wilards catches the ball during his side's victory over Etoile du Sahel in the African Champions League
Zimbabwe Dynamos goalkeeper Mania Wilards catches the ball during his side's victory over Etoile du Sahel in the African Champions League. Photograph: Bechir/AFP/Getty Images

Everything is relative. In Zimbabwe, Dynamos FC are nicknamed the Glamour Boys because they're the country's most popular club. But in the wider world of African, let alone global, football, that sobriquet could easily be seen as sarcastic. For financially Dynamos are in dire straits even though they can sell out their 45,000-capacity stadium, where at the start of this season the cheapest tickets cost … one hundred million dollars.

Zimbabwe is no place for abacuses. It's a country where even official figures put inflation at over two million % (and independent estimates place it at more than 10 times that rate) and where last May the central bank, concerned that it was running out of paper and further into the realms of the absurd, issued $50bn notes. With an exchange value of 17p, one of those notes was enough buy you one egg in Harare.

Two months later, the government announced its second currency revaluation since 2006, chopping 10 zeros off existing denominations so that the $10,000,000,000 note was now worth a single dollar. Wags suggested that removing the "1" at the front would have been more appropriate. Earlier this month, the government effectively did just that by declaring foreign currency as legal tender in the country.

There's the context. Now here's the story of the greatest football achievement of the season. It's a story without an end as yet, but if what's happened so far is anything to go by it will culminate with Dynamos being crowned the most unlikely continental champions ever.

Actually, first here's a little more context. African club football has always been dominated by north and west Africa. Congolese clubs were an ephemeral force in the late 60s and early 70s, but only Orlando Pirates in 1995 have intruded from the south. Dynamos, on their one previous appearance in the African Champions League, managed to reach the final in 1998 before losing to Ivorian giants ASEC Mimosa in what you might describe as controversial circumstances: the various ruses devised to upset the visitors before the second leg in Abidjan reached a nadir during the pre-match warm-up, when a brawl broke out and Dynamos' captain, Memory Mucherahowa, was headbutted into unconsciousness.

Since then, the standard of football in the Zimbabwean league has plummeted along with the country's economy, with players migrating en masse to South Africa. It is damning that Star TV, the southern Africa satellite TV channel, regularly screens live matches from South Africa, Kenya and Zambia but doesn't bother with the Zimbabwean league. Dynamos may have ended 10 barren years by claiming the league and cup double last season but only two of their players are in the Zimbabwe squad that has already been eliminated from the 2010 African Cup of Nations — despite the fact that Dyanmos' manager, David Mandigora, is also assistant to the national team.

Yet last Saturday, Dynamos beat Zamalek to reach the semi-finals of the African Champions League. Zamalek! The Egyptians, who've won the tournament five times, boast a slew of internationals and are flush enough to employ an expensive German coach and pay Amr Zaky's replacement, Junior Agogo, some £300,000 per year. Those resources should put them in another world to the Glamour Boys. "Dynamos players are stars because they play for Dynamos, not because of their modest wages," says Petros Kausiyo of the Harare Herald. "They are probably paid a little more than the average wage, but nothing extravagant," he adds.

"We don't have salaries as such," says Mandigora. "We are paid on a match-to-match basis depending on results and attendances." Understandably the players are eager to make the most of their Champions League success. Minutes before kick-off agaisnt Zamalek, they threatened to go on strike over outstanding bonuses; with the government having capped withdrawals at $100bn per day, club backers would only have been able to cough up if they'd spent virtually every day of the previous month toing and froing to the bank. In the end the players were placated by assurances and proof that the club had indeed sought permission for an exceptional withdrawal from the national reserve.

The other teams in Dynamos' group were no less daunting than Zamalek. There were the other Cairo giants — and also five-times African champions — Al Ahly, plus old chums ASEC Mimosa who, as one of the most consistent clubs on the continent, have reached the group stages in nine of the last 12 seasons. Even getting to the group stages was an astonishing feat for Dynamos, particularly as it entailed shocking reigning champions Etoile du Sahel. "After winning 1-0 in the home leg, the players went to Tunisia for the second leg and it was amazing to watch them," says Kausiyo. "Most of them were clearly in awe when they saw Etoile's facilities. But then the manager got them together and gave a fantastic speech, and they went on to inflict Etoile's first ever home defeat in the tournament."

"I basically just explained to them that money isn't everything," says Mandigora, whose task had been complicated by the fact that Dynamos only arrived in Tunis a few hours before the game because of the difficulty of finding sponsors to fund their travel, which cost a cool $10 trillion. "Life isn't easy," continues 51-year-old Mandigora, formerly a player at the club he now coaches. "The fact is you can only achieve things through hard work. That is what I always tell my players and our good results have proved to them that it's true. Now they are full of confidence and our fighting spirit is magnificent."

Not that fighting spirit is the only reason for their success. "We like to keep the ball on the ground and play a passing style," says Mandigora. "I only play with one striker and have five across midfield. We are well organised and the speed of players such as Philip Marufo and Edward Sadomba causes teams a lot of trouble."

To progress to the final, Dynamos will next month have to overcome the Cameroonian champions, Cotonsport Garoua, who have at last reached the semi-finals after years of underachievement on the continent. Though not as strapped as Dynamos, Cotonsport do have financial woes of their own — their French manager Denis Lavagne walked out over unpaid wages — but at least they have sponsors on their shirt, unlike Dynamos, the only team in the group stages with blank jerseys.

Bearing in mind that Dynamos are in the midst of a boardroom battle that in August resulted in a mob barging into the club's HQ and whacking opponents with baseball bats, iron bars and knobkerries, one of the biggest issues for them to resolve before the semi-final is the price of tickets for the home leg. "Dynamos regard themselves as the people's club but some observers argue that they were foolish not to raise prices for the Zamalek match, to which almost all of Harare wanted to go," says Kausiyo.

So far, Dynamos have not raised their prices throughout their campaign, even though rivals have tried to cash in on their success; after the Glamour Boys beat Etoile last May, their next domestic opponents, Kiglon Bird, jacked up the price of the cheapest ticket to $500m. That backfired when a mere 85 supporters paid … and 3,000 others stormed the stadium, knocking down one of the walls.

"The executive committee will meet next week and decide on the prices but the fans will always be foremost in our minds," says Dynamos general secretary Tawanda Murerekwa. Murerekwa has certainly bought into the football optimism that is suddenly sweeping Zimbabwe. "I think we will be No1 now," he said. Becoming No1 would mean scooping the Champions League's $1m prize fund — that's US dollars. "Winning the tournament would go a long way to securing the club's future," said Murerekwa, adding: "We would be able to do things like get training equipment and a team bus."

The symbolism of a team bus would be powerful. It was an inability to pay an outstanding debt to a bus hire company in 2004 that forced the Zimbabwe FA into an embarrassing sale, when it had to auction off everything from chairs, filing cabinets and a refrigerator to staplers and reams of paper. And still only raised enough to cover one-third of the debt.

In the short term, however, a Dynamos victory in the Champions League would probably increase the exodus of talent rather than decrease it. "I've just had a call from a South African agent who wants to come and watch us this weekend," revealed Mandigora when I spoke to him yesterday. "It will be hard to stop our players leaving. They can earn much more in South Africa than they can here."

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