World Cup Hero: Coffi Codjia

May 4th, 2006 | by: WC Bob | View Comments

It is a tradition of mine that every World Cup I pick a random team to support. By now, you might be aware that my choice is Angola. The Palancas are my team and I look forward to seeing them lift the trophy in Berlin in July. Another World Cup tradition I have is to pick a hero and love the heck out of him, while annoying the heck out of my friends by talking about my hero all the time. Just hearing the name Gheorghe Hagi, for example, makes me feel all warm and tingly. Instead of waiting for the tournament to unfold to pick a hero this year, I have already adopted one. He is Benin’s connection to the world’s biggest party.

When the list of the World Cup referees was released a few years back the first name that leaped out on the page was Coffi Codjia. The name itself is kind of cool, but the fact that he is from Benin really caught my interest.

Wedged in between Togo and Nigeria like a piece of corn stuck in your teeth, Benin has roughly 8 million people and only one of them has ever worked at the World Cup.

Coffi Codjia was selected to take part in the 2002 World Cup where he ended up serving as a fourth official for the match between Spain and Slovenia. A week later he had his moment in the sun by serving as the head referee for the Costa Rica-Turkey match. My hero proceeded to hand out five yellow cards and to take control of a match featuring those uncontrollable players from Costa Rica and Turkey.

As we approach Codjia’s second turn at World Cup officiating, I think it is only appropriate that we get to know a little more about the man behind the legend.

• His full name is Bonaventure Coffi Codjia, but his mates simply call him Coffi.
• His father, Alphonse Codjia Coffi, was also an international referee.
• Coffi was a good footballer until he suffered an injury in 1986.
• He will earn $40,000 for refereeing in the World Cup.
• He is trained as a maritime transport investigator.

Lest you think he lets refereeing get in the way of his day job (whatever the heck it means to be a maritime transport investigator), he says that the “frequent absences do not impact negatively on the company’s evolution.”

I am sure you will agree that Coffi Codjia’s story is a good one. I hope you will join me in the hero worshipping or at least tolerate the fact I will be writing about him a lot.