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Tony Yeboah
A mate sent me this today. My favourite bit isn't even in relation to the great man but rather to Benjani's tardiness. If only Sven had read this prior to last Thursday!
An article written by Peter Ndlovu...
Things have been quiet this month so when I sat down to write this
article my mind went blank. Although the following tale has very
little to do with the game of football, fans will still find it quite
entertaining.
It is from the 2006 African Nations Cup in Egypt . We had just played
our final group game, ending on a high by beating a strong Ghana side
but still crashing out of the tournament. At the hotel that night we
decided to have a few drinks and toast to our victory. I had invited
my friend Tony Yeboah along (fans of English football will remember
him from his highly successful period with Leeds United) as he had
been watching the match.
The lads started giving Tony a lot of stick for his country's loss,
especially our head coach Charles Mhlauri. Tony was taking it quite
gracefully but, as a proud Ghanaian, I could sense his patience was
wearing thin. Nevertheless, the drinks kept flowing and so did the
jokes.
It came to the end of the night and some of the lads had disappeared
to bed, most notably our coach and Tony. Now during the whole
tournament Charles had personally entered the hotel rooms of our most
lazy players (Benjani was the worst) and pulled them out of bed in the
morning to get ready for training so myself and a couple of the other lads decided to repeat the routine on him. We got the keys from reception and seven of us bundled into his hotel room at 4 a.m. To our
horror it was not Charles who we found in bed, it was Tony Yeboah. The
worst part was that he was having sex with Charles' wife!
I quickly rounded the boys up and ushered them out of the room,
frantically hoping to keep a lid on the situation. After all, it was I
who invited Tony to the party! We found Charles in one of the hotel
bathrooms. He had had far too much to drink and crashed out.
The next morning, at breakfast, I quizzed Tony 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'
Charles did eventually find out about the incident and I think he
separated from his wife for a period. The last I heard though was that they are back together and he's now coaching in the USA .
The moral of the story is never to piss off Tony Yeboah!