Cephas Chimedza pays tribute to Norman Maroto – ZimEye

By CEPHAS CHIMEDZA

We became friends in 1996. I was in sixth grade and he was in seventh grade.

We played against each other in the U13s, I was in the support team and he was in the Dynamos team.

I was selected as part of the uniformed schools for the Harare regional qualifiers.

On the day of the competition, our teacher/coach excitedly told us that we were going to win the competition because he had a special surprise prepared for us.

As kids we thought it was new equipment because that was always motivating. It turned out he brought Norman Marotto to the team.

He arrived and when he saw me he cheekily said ahhh you are the policeman’s son aren’t you? I said all boys are policemen’s kids. He corrected himself and said you play for this police force.

We won the match with a brilliant goal from Norman and a few weeks later we got the chance to represent Harare.

Norman didn’t attend the first day of competition, missed the review process, and we were eliminated in the semifinals and had to play a 3rd/4th place match the next day.

Our main striker arrived and joined the team. Seven minutes into the game, he scored twice. One of the referees found it strange that a team with such a prolific striker was not playing in the final and called for the game to be stopped and Norman to check if he had brought the nail polish he had used the day before. Unfortunately, he didn’t so he was sent off, but we still had the goal and were only one man short.

Fast forward to 2001, and Norman is scoring for the reserve team.

At the age of 18, he was given a chance to join the first team and scored twice on his debut against Circle United. He never looked back and became a regular player.

After that game, I also made the team, thanks to Norman’s performance against Circle, he opened the door for me, the coaches, teammates and fans were all excited to see what the next young boy would do, Norman made everyone believe in us.

In our Churchill/Dynamos whatsapp group, every birthday, Norman would post a photo with the birthday person.

Just last week I said, Lumumba, you took a photo with everyone except me, and Mboma said I came to Belgium for this. Hey, Norman, what are we going to do with our photos?

Whenever there was a trending football topic on Facebook, you would call me and say, oh, people want to talk about something they haven’t discussed all day.

I am still waiting for your call my friend, tell me that all the messages I get are people chatting from places I haven’t been in for a while.
July 11th is your birthday, so we’ll post it.
I am in pain, and I write this to drive away the pain.

Have a good rest in Darachimo

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