The supporters draped in Togo’s bright yellow shirts hollered their joy, the echoes bouncing off the low, corrugated iron roof. Others clambered onto the rough wooden benches with peeling paint that filled the small shed, no larger than a big garage, in which they were watching the game.
Faded posters of soccer stars of past and present looked down, as other fans cavorted on the sandy floor. Several hundred fans were crammed into a space not much larger than a squash court, and — under a fierce West African sun at midday — many times as hot. La Maison du Foot, or “the house of football,” is not the average place to watch a soccer match. But Togo is not the average World Cup soccer team.
The fans were celebrating their first World Cup goal, a sumptuous low shot from the right by the striker Kader Coubadja that arrowed into the corner of the net. The goal, at the end of the first half of Tuesday’s game, gave the Togolese an unexpected lead against South Korea, who reached the semi-finals of the World Cup four years ago. Beyond the goal, the Togolese were cheering their very presence at these finals, following a qualification campaign and a World Cup buildup that stretches credibility.
No one ever expected Togo to get to the World Cup. The tiny West African nation of 5 million people has no great soccer history: the Togolese had never qualified for the World Cup before, and had never even made it out of the group stages of the African Nations Cup. Drawn with African powers Senegal, Zambia and Mali, few people gave Togo a prayer. Yet the Sparrow Hawks, as the team is known, made it to Germany in fine style, propelled by 11 goals from the young striker Emmanuel Adebayor.
Feelings of joy
The joy in Togo was immense. Thousands of people took to the streets. That worried the government. Several months earlier thousands of opposition supporters had taken to the streets to protest election results they believed were rigged. The security forces fired on the protesters, killing several hundred. When Togo made it to the World Cup, the authorities cut the power in the capital of Lome, fearing that supporters of the opposition might take advantage of the general confusion to create trouble. The World Cup party continued with the lights out.
Then the real problems started. Togo’s coach, Stephen Keshi, a tough former Nigeria international, was sacked after a disastrous showing in the 2006 African Nations Cup final. Togo was undoubtedly poor, failing to win a game. But Keshi’s real crime seemed to have been a falling out with Adebayor, the country’s only top-class player. After Togo’s opening African Nations Cup game, a 2-0 loss to DR Congo, Keshi and Adebayor squared up to each other on the way out of the stadium. The long-limbed Adebayor and the shorter, much stockier Keshi had to be pulled away from each other by other squad members.
Keshi was sacked three months before the start of the World Cup. A committee of Togo internationals attempted to get him reinstated. Adebayor pointedly kept his distance, though, and Keshi was replaced by Otto Pfister. Pfister’s job was complicated: take a squad he did not know, but which was widely considered the weakest at the World Cup, and create a team that would not be humiliated by Togo’s opponents, South Korea, Switzerland and the 1998 World Champions, France.
Togo’s preparations were chaotic. The players fell out with the Football Federation, apparently over bonuses. (One of the immutable laws of the World Cup is that one of the African teams will squabble over win bonuses.) The Togolese were apparently asking for $220,000 for taking part, as well as further sums for winning or drawing games. The sums, in a country where the average income is not much more than a dollar a day, are colossal.
Most Togolese supporters did not blame the players however: “Footballers cannot compete if they are hungry,” said one fan in La Maison du Foot. “And the World Cup will bring lots of money to Togo.”
Support for the coach
A disgusted Pfister had earlier walked out when his players went on strike, both as a way of saying he could not work on his own, and in support of the players. Yet he returned for the opening game, convinced by the pleas of the footballers. Cheers reverberated around La Maison du Foot when Pfister’s image appeared on the TV screen, a sign of which side most Togolese were taking. Yet those cheers were nothing compared with the avalanche of applause that greeted Coubadja’s goal moments later.
Ultimately Togo’s World Cup opening party fell flat. Captain Jean-Paul Abalo was sent off and the Koreans scored two goals to win the game. In La Maison du Foot faces fell, but there was plenty of fighting talk.
“We lost because our captain was sent off, but we played well,” said one fan. “I am happy, because with all our political problems we have here, football is the only thing to give us joy,” added another.
The Togolese will get the opportunity for further joy, perhaps even more intense, when they take on Switzerland Monday and then the former colonial master France next Friday. They are unlikely to win — but then, no one ever thought they would reach the World Cup.
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James Copnall is a correspondent for the BBC.
