Today marks three days after Benjani Mwaruwaris testimonial match a memorable event for all Zimbabweans and the first of its kind.
Perhaps, in future, we could see the second such event, featuring Zimbabwes legendary captain and all-time leading scorer Peter Ndlovu.
But on Saturday it was all to do with Benjani, the man who rose from the Magwegwe West football ground in Bulawayo playing for Young Blood through to South Africa, France and finally England.
Its sad though to see that while Benjani was busy planning a super farewell to the fans that supported him throughout his career, the usual merchants of greed were planning how to milk him of his hard-earned cash.
While we are not privy, at least for now, to how much Benjani spent it could have been over half a million dollars we know for certain that a local mining company had pledged $1 million for the entire event, but pulled out when told who the organisers were.
First, some sections of the media were of the opinion that Zifa wanted to hijack the project when they demanded that a match-staging agreement be signed prior to the match. Zifa were trying to protect themselves from the shame of the Brazil-Zimbabwe match of June 2 2010.
Zifa knew exactly what they were dealing with and eventually Benjani signed the agreement on Saturday morning, which also guaranteed each player from the Warriors got $500 as appearance fee. In fact, Benjani had been made aware of all this in February when he met Zifa president Cuthbert Dube.
Benjani had been told not to sign anything and the match hung in the balance until the early hours of Saturday when he eventually saw sense and went against the poor advice. The stars had arrived and what an embarrassment it would have been had the match been cancelled.
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The Warriors appearance fee has to come from the gate takings, as we are made to understand, funds had run out in the build up to the game. It will be sheer luck if the Benjani Mwaruwari Foundation gets anything from the gate takings since the former skipper was not directly in charge of them.
One of the organisers was heard remarking after the match that they had made a killing after the huge crowd paying $5 each went in without tickets after 4pm when the main match was about to start.
