Ghanaians Score On and Off Field in African Cup

By Spencer Hall
The African Cup is going on this month, and with it some of the fiercest soccer you’ll see on the planet. Africans don’t take nearly as many dives as effete Euro players -- in fact yellow cards have been flying at the Cup for “simulation,” the despicable flopping Americans usually point to as the reason they hate soccer. It’s serious business, as this ad for the Egyptian team’s 2008 campaign shows:

When you get a 5,000 year old civilization excited about something, you know it’s something big.
It is a more physical, nastier form of the game in every sense. (In fact, I’ve played soccer with immigrant Africans in Atlanta, and if you walk away with both kneecaps, consider yourself lucky.) The stakes are high on and off the field, as Zimbabwean great Peter Ndlovu writes in his column on Footyhighlights.com.
The setup: his Zimbabwean team beats Ghana. At the bar after the game, the Zimbabwean manager gives one of the Ghanaian players hell for losing to his team. The defeated Ghanaian takes the whole thing patiently, and waits until the end of the night to take his revenge: sleeping with the manager’s wife, a scene stumbled on by Ndlovu and several members of the Zimbabwean national team, while the manager is crashed out drunk in the bathroom.
When Ndlovu asks about why the guy seduced the manager’s wife to avenge some harsh but innocuous bartalk, the guy has a brilliant, brilliant answer.
[quote="Peter Ndlovu"]The next morning, at breakfast, I quizzed my friend about what happened and he delivered a line which I will remember all my life: “When a man insults my country I insult him, by taking his woman.”[/quote]
Take note: do NOT mess with Ghanaians.
> Ndlovu Corner | Footy Highlights↵