WE WON; THEY CAN'T BE A REAL TEAM:

Africa's Soccer Impostors: The bizarre, sad tale of Togo's fake national team. (Brian Phillips, Oct. 4, 2010, Slate)

Last month, impostors pretending to be Togo's national soccer team traveled 3,500 miles from West Africa to the Persian Gulf, where they played a match against the national team of Bahrain. Bahrain won easily, 3-0, which was unusual enough for Bahrain that it made the team suspicious—Josef Hickersberger, Bahrain's Austrian coach, noted in surprise that the Togo players "were not fit enough to play 90 minutes." When word of the match traveled back to Africa, the Togolese soccer authorities were shocked. "The players who took part in the friendly against Bahrain were completely fake," thundered Gen. Seyi Memene, the president of Togo's soccer federation. "We have not sent any team of footballers to Bahrain."

Togo, which occupies a sliver of land between Ghana and Benin on the Gulf of Guinea, is a soccer-loving country, and the news that a mysterious group of easily winded players had impersonated the national team provoked a public outcry. Investigations were launched, and the nation's sports minister muttered to the press about "shadowy handlers" and "mafia groups." After what must have been a grueling piece of detective work, the investigators pinned their suspicions on Tchanile Bana, a former national-team coach who had recently been suspended for taking another fake team to a tournament in Egypt. Bana confessed, apologized, was banned from the game for three years, and insisted—maybe a little too fervently—that he had acted alone.

In the United States, Bana's misadventure caused a minor ripple of amusement, then disappeared as soon as the next prostitute-soliciting high-school football coach rolled into view. In Togo, however, this bizarre story has continued to dominate the public's attention. Over the past few weeks, it has gone beyond a simple case of mistaken identity to include layers of conspiracy, fraud, corruption, political instability, and horrific violence. The fake team that played in Bahrain, then, can be seen as a stand-in for all the difficulties that face African soccer, where sports and political instability are often juxtaposed and where day-to-day reality can be starkly different from the cheerful picture painted during this summer's World Cup in South Africa.