Zaire’s performance at the 1974 West Germany World Cup was undoubtedly one of the most colorful in history. He left behind some images that are hard to forget: a free kick for Brazil that against all orthodoxy was kicked by Zairian Ilunga Mwepu when the referee gave the order, a series of substitutes calmly smoking on the bench in the middle of the match… Those ridiculous postcards have transformed the African team into a kind of World Cup buffoon, but they have also revealed the enormous prejudices that existed (and still exist) towards football on that continent.
It is true that the first sub-Saharan team to qualify for this competition lost all three of its Group 2 matches and ended with 14 goals conceded and none for. That does not mean that their players are rookies who are unaware of the regulations, as it has slipped. Without going any further, British television commentator John Motson referred to Mwepu’s unusual reaction to Brazil as «a strange moment of African ignorance».
Phrases like this were heard multiplied and legitimized during the tournament when, in fact, Zaire came to the tournament as the champion of the Africa Cup, a tournament in which Mulamba N’Daye, part of this World Cup team, was the top scorer with nine goals in six matches.
Zaire players try to organize Getty Images
Indeed, the country’s soccer began to take off in the mid-1960s, when President Joseph Mobutu embraced the sport as a national cause. Following the example of Ghana, where President Kwame Nkrumah had achieved great popularity through football victories, Mobutu laid out a plan for the country’s football revival. He allowed the professionalization of players and allowed many of those who had left the nation to play in Belgium to return. He also hired a foreign coach: Hungarian Ferenc Csanádi, who won the continental tournament title in ’68. Time passed, Mobutu remained in power and was renamed Mobutu Sese Seko, he renamed the national team – he named them Leopards, instead of Lions, for a matter of national belonging – and managed to get his second foreign coach, the Yugoslav Blagoje Vidinic, will be crowned again on the continent and bring them to Germany ’74.
Before the tournament began, captain Mantantu Kidumu stated that Mobutu had rewarded each player for his African trophy with a house, a car and a vacation for them and their families in the United States. The illusion of what could come if they had a good World Cup performance was beyond imagination.
But let’s analyze step by step his performance in this World Cup, to clear up some misunderstandings. The first match was against Scotland and ended with a fairly decent 2-0 against. The British had some illustrious names – Kenny Dalglish, Joe Jordan, Dennis Law, Billy Bremner, Danny McGrain and Peter Lorimer – and were looking to score easily on their debut. Scotland manager Willie Ormond said his boys should «pack up and go home» if they failed to beat Zaire in that opening game.
Zaire in action against Scotland AP
It must be said that the game was not even: the two goals came in the first half, one of them after a serious mistake by goalkeeper Muamba Kazidi, who redeemed himself with several saves and a good performance that managed to keep his team with a modest difference against.
After that match, Zairean players reported being racially harassed on the pitch by Scottish players. They even reported being spat on during the game. His claim was not heard by the authorities.
The worst started after that match. The beginning of the disaster was an economic question. Before the duel with Yugoslavia, the government advisers who had traveled with the team informed the squad that they were not going to receive the agreed money to be in the competition. The footballers, in principle, decided not to play the game. They finally appeared on the field, although they did not provide much opposition to a team that thrashed them: it was 9-0 for Yugoslavia. «Frankly, we could have gone down by 20, we had lost our morale,» N’Daye later commented.
That match had a strong controversy around the goalkeeper Kazidi, who was replaced after the third goal against although he had not been responsible for any of the goals (it could be argued that he did not stretch his arms in the second, a free kick executed to the post of the barrier, but that’s it). Many argued that the Yugoslav coach was removing from the field who had been the best against Scotland to benefit the country of his birth. In reality, Vidinic received threats from the Zairean rulers who were in Germany to replace the player yes or yes, at that time. As the logic of power marks, he did it: he preferred not to find out what the possible consequences of disobeying were.
The figurine of the official album of the tournament, quite discriminatory ESPN.com
That substitution did not give much result, since in the immediate play after the change, Yugoslavia scored 4-0 after a collective distraction in a free kick, and N’Daye had to leave the field, sent off for kicking the referee in a protest.
Sure, small detail: the one who kicked the referee was actually Ilunga Mwepu. The judge showed the wrong player the red card. «The referees don’t tell us apart, they don’t even try. They just see our color and think we’re all the same. I told him it wasn’t me that hit him. My partner told him it was him, he didn’t want to listen to us. I cried terribly after that injustice,» N’Daye said. Another sign of discrimination ignored by the authorities.
The beating received in the second game did not go down too well in the upper echelons of power in Zaire. Mobutu prevented the press from entering the hotel where the players were gathered and sent his presidential guards to threaten them. «The slogan was clear: if we lost by four goals against Brazil, none of us were going to go home,» Mwepu said.
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Zaire managed to lose «barely» 3-0 against the Brazil of Jairzinho, Rivelino, Valdomiro and company. The color datum was that desperate action of Mwepu, which was taken as a gesture of savagery and ignorance. Of course, when he did, Brazil was already winning by three goals, there were five minutes left in the match, there was a free kick on the edge of the area with Rivelino in front of the ball and the threat of his president hovered in the African’s head. So he acted madly and desperately to disorient his rival: he ran out, kicked the ball, pretended to be distracted, causing surprise in the crowd and in his rivals.
In the end, the trick seemed to have worked. The free kick ended far from the goal and the Zaire squad was saved from a possible government reprimand. He still left the World Cup as the laughing stock of the Cup. In the midst of some hurtful television comments -an English reporter said that Etepe Kakako «once hit a zebra» and slipped that Tshimen Buanga was «like Beckenbauer, only black»- and a general image that treated its footballers as naive, the country that had achieved a historic classification returned to its land as a forgotten squad, victim of explicit threats and constant discrimination in civilized Europe.