The L-Sporto firm are a fraud !!!!

http://www.mobmagazine.com/ManageArticle.asp?C=120&A=6698

The Story Of L-Sporto And Mafia
January 11, 2004
 

I HAVE always been fascinated by the Mafia and that my all-time favorite film is The Godfather, that my all-time favorite actor is Al Pacino and my closest friends call me The Godfather is not a coincidence.

My all-time favorite book is the legal drama The Firm, a powerful moving story about a brilliant young lawyer who was recruited by a small Memphis firm that never lost a case and had connections to the Chicago Mafia.

I have read lots of stuff about the Mafia - the Russian Mob, the Gambino crime family, the Sicilian Mafia in Italy, the billions of dollars in dirty money, the drug smuggling, the betting syndicates etc, etc.

Judges investigating the Mafia have been shot and killed in the Italian streets, others have died in their cars in carports, the switching on of the engine triggering a live current that detonates bombs planted overnight under the vehicle.

I've always believed the majority of wealthy businessmen who own professional clubs in Europe and pay staggering amounts in wages to their players are either linked to the Mafia or are the head of the Mafia.

Professional football, I've always believed, is a vehicle that is being used to legalize dirty money earned by the Mafioso through such dirty mega deals like drug smuggling, illegal betting syndicates, child prostitution etc, etc.

Felix Sapao, the sweet-talking Malawian with a good command of the English language and a deep knowledge of football, is not the type of person one would associate with the Mafia.

He does not carry a gun, he does not drive flashy BMW and Ferrari cars, he does not wear expensive hand-sewn suits, he does not wear Gucci shoes and he does not hide his small eyes behind dark glasses.

Sapao lives a simple life, drinks Pilsener at Raylton Sports Club, takes a taxi when he is moving around Harare, catches a bus on the occasions that he returns home to his native Malawi and wears L-Sporto tracksuits most of the time.

He is hardworking too, spends most of time working around the clock on football-related matters, has contacts all over the world and, like most good guys in the world, supports Manchester United.

I've known Sapao for three years now, our initial contact coming in 2001 when he became the official link as Dynamos and Italian sportswear firm L-Sporto discussed the possibility of a sponsorship deal.

He could talk endlessly about football, about the potential in Zimbabwe, about how he would change the face of marketing in domestic football, about the problems he had experienced in his native Malawi and his contacts around the world.

Those days he drank Scotch whisky, the Bulldogs Pub in central Harare was his favorite place and he was not the smoker that he has become today. In short he had vision. Or so I thought. Looks can be deceiving.

Three years down the line the real Sapao has emerged from the fake Sapao who charmed me, charmed Dynamos and even charmed Temba Mliswa into believing that he could add value to our football and ended up being drafted in as a partner at Worldmark Sport International.

The real Sapao has turned out to be a typical representative of the Mob, the Mafia, and the sooner that my old friend is asked to return to his native Malawi and try his old job as a DJ then the better for our football.

Sapao has been working here since last year, working as the representative of L-Sporto who signed a contract with the Warriors' Trust as the official sponsors of the senior national team.

Whether he has been issued with a formal work permit to work here is another matter but he has been the public face of L-Sporto, that Italian sportswear firm, who have become the official kit sponsors of the Warriors.

L-Sporto works differently from the other sponsors like Adidas, Nike and Puma.

While these sportswear manufacturing firms splash millions of dollars to have their names carried by national teams and the world's leading sportspersons, L-Sporto does not pay such a fortune for those who want to be identified with them.

Of course they supply kit but their emphasis is on replicas, which they sell to the country that would have signed their contract for onward sell to the people in that country.

Okay, that's fine because everyone benefits and it would be unfair to try and suggest that L-Sporto can afford what the likes of Adidas and Nike can.

But it is also a fact that L-Sporto's dealings with many of their clients in Africa have been questionable and that Zimbabwe will be the only country in Africa carrying their logo at the Nations Cup illustrates the doubts that the continent has in this company.

Zambia tried a marriage with L-Sporto but it never worked, it was the same in Ghana and Reinhard Fabisch does not want to even hear about them following a fall-out when they struck a deal with Kenya that went terribly wrong.

Last week L-Sporto showed us some of their colors when they deceived us to believe that the El Salvador national team was coming to Zimbabwe for two international friendly matches.

Sapao told us that this team was the real El Salvador national team and the original match in December last year was even postponed because, he argued, the Central Americans could not play a second string Warriors' team.

He told us about a high-powered delegation coming from the United States where his L-Sporto boss, Chris Andersen, is based.

He told us that the Warriors kit for the Nations Cup finals would be launched at their match against El Salvador and he told us it would be an event made in heaven.

Poor Sapao probably thought he was dealing with fools, idiots who could not distinguish between a good team and a bad one, people who could not tell between a genuine national team and a fake one.

Poor Sapao probably thought we are all like zombies - people who see no evil, speak no evil and hear no evil.

Poor Sapao probably thought he was dealing with illiterate people from some poor tribe in the remotest part of Malawi who cannot tell the difference between Bakili Bullets and Mighty Telcom Wanderers.

In short my poor old friend and his band of cronies at L-Sporto thought we were fools. No we are not Mr. Felix. Just look at our literacy ratio and you will see that we can read and write, we can think and we can research.

Felix Sapao and his crew at L-Sporto probably forgot about a man called Lawrence Moyo, a newspaper called The Herald and the power of the internet.

Now and again I keep saying that Lawrence Moyo is the best sports journalist we have in this country and they are people who keep doubting this and claiming that I'm just heaping praise on my workmate.

Well, what then can you say about his stunning investigation into the El-Salvador fiasco and the revelations that Sapao and his friends brought us impostors masquerading as the genuine article?

It will take a great, great story to beat this investigation as the story of the year in Zimbabwean journalism.

The world just cannot believe it that in this new millennium we can have such a case happening in international football.

Sapao and his friends deceived millions of Zimbabweans, 20 000 fans who converged at the National Sports Stadium for the match, the guest of honour Aeneas Chigwedere, the Sports Commission and the Warriors Trust.

That they haven't even apologized for the farce and the role they played in the whole mess is either a testimony of their sheer arrogance or just mere stupidity.

In any other country L-Sporto, that is Sapao and his fellow cheats, would have been kicked out of the country the day that the reports surfaced that they deceived the nation.

Sapao would probably have been locked up in a filthy jail and be deported to his native country for his acts of misconduct.

The L-Sporto deal would have been cancelled with no compensation paid to this Italian firm whose leadership lives in the United States. Sometimes you need a radical approach to get the best returns and ensure that you retain your dignity.

We have lived before without L-Sporto, in fact for 23 years, we knew virtually nothing about this company but our lives still went on.

We can live without L-Sporto, in fact we qualified for the Nations Cup finals without the help of this company and we can do the same again without their help.

We have lived before without Felix Sapao, in fact for 20 years, we knew virtually nothing about this man but our lives still went on. We can live without Sapao.

L-Sporto can go to hell, especially if they are here to deceive us and make us appear as fools and confused people. We don't need the Mafia in our football, we don't the Mob in our lives and people like Sapao are representatives of evil.

Of course he is my friend but there comes a time when you have draw the dividing line and when friends become a liability then it is time to dump them.