An African club is now reported to have spent $1 000 (about R18 200) on a sangoma, but still lost their next match 2-0.
Zimbabwean top-flight side Dynamos are said to have hired the services of a traditional healer ahead of their game against Highlanders this past Sunday.
Read: Wydad 'fighting' to stop player Mokwena wants from leaving
According to Soccer24, the decision to call a sangoma came after some players boycotted training last week, with the club said to have felt the need to cleanse the team ahead of their next league clash.
However, despite the healer's intervention at a hefty cost of $1 000, Dynamos went on to lose 2-0 to Highlanders, and the latter side now has a five-point gap on of the former, who are currently in sixth place on the Zimbawean Premier Soccer League table.
A source close to Dynamos told H-Metro: "Given the issues that were happening with the boys (the players) who were boycotting training, there was a feeling that such a payment was not the right thing to do for the club at the moment.
"However, the owners of the club said that this was a tradition at Dynamos and it was not going to be changed simply because the players were boycotting training. They said these player boycotts have been happening as long as they can remember, and they come and go, and this cannot be used as an excuse to stop payments to the sangoma.
"It was like they were saying that paying the sangoma was more important, in terms of getting the result which we wanted from the game against Highlanders, than the training itself.
Read: The latest from Ahly on Tau's future 'revealed'
"The message was like as long as we satisfied the sangoma, then we did not need to worry about the issues that had happened at training because the club would still be in a position to compete against Highlanders.
"Of course, it didn't happen like that because we lost that game 2-0 and the performance of the boys showed that they had been affected by the issues which had happened on the training field.
"We don't know what the sangoma said about the result because we never get to meet him given he is only known to a few people at the club.
"The sangoma got his dues and, maybe, if you were going to ask him how did we end up losing, he will say that without his intervention, we were going to lose maybe 5-0, I don't know.
"But what we cannot hide is the fact that we are concentrating on things which don't matter in this age and era when other clubs, of our magnitude, are investing in sports science.
"We are still stuck in the old ways of doing business instead of asking ourselves why we have not won the league in 10 years if the so-called powers of these sangomas really work.
"It's a reflection of where we are today as a club, and maybe we deserve the result that we got on Sunday."