Andre Dede Ayew and Luis Suarez
GhanaWeb Feature
As Luiz Suarez lolloped into the tunnel in ecstasy, he established himself as a legend of Uruguayan football but also a number one enemy of African football.
That sequence of play – Suarez palming the ball, Asamoah Gyan’s penalty hitting the crossbar and Suarez running into the dressing room in absolute excitement has become an undeletable memory for Africans in and around the continent.
So painful is it that twelve years after that dramatic incident at the FNB Stadium, most Africans still carry the pain of how close yet so far the continent came to making the final four of the World Cup.
On Wednesday, I went to the National Museum of Qatar with a colleague from another media house and we crossed paths with two football fans from Senegal and Cameroon.
After they figured that we were from Ghana and were playing Uruguay on Friday, they both exclaimed “Uruguay, you can’t lose. You have to win for Africa. What they did to us in South Africa, we will never forget.”
Such is the animosity and spirit of hatred and vengeance that Luis Suarez ingrained in the hearts of Africans with that single act of unsportsmanship (from an African perspective) twelve years ago.
There have been two editions of the World Cup since then and after what appeared to be an eternity, Ghana finally has a chance to pierce an equally painful one in the hearts of Luis Suarez and Uruguay.
And it appears the football gods have equally been longing for this tasty and feisty encounter with the game on Friday setting up to be a decider for who joins Portugal to make it out of Group H.
Of the 26 players in the Ghana team currently, only Andre Ayew was part of the team in South Africa and even for him, he had to sit out the game because of card accumulation but if there is any member of the current team who lives for such moments, it is the second son of the maestro.
Andre Ayew is more than aware of the importance of the game and as he told GhanaWeb’s Daniel Oduro in the aftermath of the South Korea game, the team will approach the game with all the determination and commitment it requires.
"I'm the only survivor [Ghana 2010], so there's no point in talking too much; it's a game where we will need points to progress to the next round,” Andre Ayew said.
Unlike Ghana, Uruguay’s 2010 squad has five surviving members in the current side and the chief villain – Luiz Suarez is present.
Aware of the pain and anguish he inflicted on the country and continent in 2010, Suarez was the first to throw a salvo about Friday’s game. “We are going to put our lives and soul into this last match, Ghana is a good team but we know them, we have beaten them before and we know how to beat them again. We have watched their video clips and they have a porous defence, we will utilize that to beat them.”
Coach Otto Addo might have downplayed the motive of vengeance in his GFA interview but every African and supporter of the Black Stars is pumped up for one on Friday and the Black Stars must deliver it not for Ghanaians only but Africans at large.
Author: Perez Erzoah Kwaw
