World Cup Spirits Collide

While the players will be battling it out on the pitch during the World Cup, there is also a battle to see which spirits are the most powerful. A Togo voodoo priest believes that the spirits are wearing the yellow and green of the Sparrowhawks. Togbui Assiogbo Gnagblondjro III, who hopefully has a shorter, easier to remember nickname, says that Togo will go far in the tournament because the ancestral spirits of Togo say so.

I’m not sure when the ancestral spirits of Togo last watched a football match, but if it was any time in the last century they would realize that Togo probably isn’t destined to stay very long in Germany. Then again, half of Togo’s 5 million inhabitants practice one form or another of voodoo and I’d hate to get on their bad side. Togo will win.

Not to be outdone is a member of the Iranian Football Federation who voiced his opinion last month that Group D opponent Mexico isn’t above using a little witchcraft to gain a World Cup advantage. Never fear, he said, “We have taken adequate measures to counter this type of trickery, and we believe that true believers will never succumb to this type of magic. The Iranian team has a very profound faith, which will protect them like an impenetrable fortress.”

Witch doctors have also played a role in Ivory Coast football for years.

Witch doctors scatter charms on the field or smear the goalposts with magic ointments to keep the ball out. In 1984 no fewer than 150 fétisheurs stayed with the Ivorian national team at their hotel before a crunch game in the African Nations Cup: Each player took a bath in water treated with various potions, before being invited to make a wish in the ear of a pigeon. Another soccer club was taken to court in 1998 when, following a decisive league match in Bouake, its players admitted to drinking a concoction prepared by a juju man (the case was dismissed).

Don’t knock making a wish in the ear of a pigeon until you try it. If that is what it takes for my beloved Angola to win a game at the World Cup I’ll chat up a pigeon or two for hours.

All of this talk of spirits and witchcraft might be a moot point, however, since a Shaman from Ecuador has claimed that he has chased the evil spirits away.

Let’s hope he let a few stay behind. It will be more fun that way.