Who Is Pretending To Be The Togo Soccer Team?
Last week, Bahrain hosted Togo in a friendly, beating them 3-0. Then Togo's soccer federation said they hadn't actually sent their national team, and they didn't know who Bahrain had just played.
Bahrain's coach complained about the match immediately afterward, saying the Togo team “were not fit enough to play 90 minutes.” Allegations quickly sprang up that a fake agent had booked the match, and sold it to Bahrain's soccer federation. Then Togo chimed in, saying, hey, no one told us about a friendly.
We cannot send our players to play friendly matches abroad without the approval of FIFA,” [Togo Soccer Chairman Seiyi] Memene said. “The players that took part in the friendly match against Bahrain were completely fake. We have not sent any team of footballers to Bahrain. The players are not known to us.”
The story gets more complicated. Tchanile Bana, a member of the team's technical staff, accompanied the team to Bahrain even though he was just banned for two years for previously taking the team to an international tournament without permission.
Now Togo's sports minister says the players belonged to a “mafia group.” Wonderful.
Obviously the real losers here are Bahrain, which couldn't hang more than three on a group of men recruited off the street.
Apparent Fake Letters Accompanied Fake Togo Team
Send an email to Barry Petchesky, the author of this post, at barryp@deadspin.com.
Fake National Soccer Team Plays Real International Match
On September 7, the African nation of Togo and the Middle Eastern kingdom of Bahrain played a friendly international soccer match. The only problem: Togo says it never sent its team to play the game.
Bahrain, an island nation in the Persian Gulf, beat Togo 3-0. Or, really, they beat a team that said it was Togo, but, according to Togolese officials, was just a collection of guys. According to the chair of Togo's soccer federation, Seiyi Memene, the team was “completely fake.” (Well, not completely fake, one imagines.) As Memene points out, Togo must clear all friendly international matches with FIFA, following a series of irregularities last year.
Indeed, the Bahraini team has ceded that the Togolese seemed oddly unprepared—which may be because “the players may not have been professional footballers or even Togolese nationals.” Says Bahrain's coach Josef Hickersberger: “They were not fit enough to play 90 minutes—the match was very boring.”
So what gives, beyond the obvious ontological questions about what constitutes “fake”-ness in the context of contingent designations of nationality and within the arbitrary confines of sport? FIFA is currently investigating the situation, and several reports have come out blaming a “fake agent” who “sold” the match to the Bahrainis, though Bahrain has said the agent it worked with had always been “100% alright.” ESPN's Soccernet floats a theory about a “FIFA-approved organization based in Singapore.”
The most logical explanation may be the one offered by the vice president of the Bahrain football federation, Sheik Ali bin Khalifa Al Khalifa, who says the confusion arose from an interagency conflict in Togo, where FIFA—the international federation that governs soccer—has instituted a temporary panel after dissolving the country's official FA—football association—last year. It's possible that the interim panel came into conflict with the sports ministry, and some rogue sports minister sent out a team of Togolese scrubs. Though I'm holding out hope that there's a roving band of soccer impersonators just showing up in various countries and challenging teams to matches.
[BBC; pic, of a 2009 match between the real Togolese team and the real Bahrainian team, via AP]
Send an email to Max Read, the author of this post, at max@gawker.com.