Togo Forced Home!

Togo’s national team will return home and not compete in the African Cup of Nations, captain Emmanuel Adebayor has said. Gunmen ambushed the team bus in Angola’s Cabinda province on Friday, killing the driver, a squad coach and press officer.

After the initial shock of the attack, Togolese players, their head coach and national football officials all said they would remain in the competition, but their prime minister ordered the team home and sent a plane to bring them back.

“We had a meeting between players yesterday and we told ourselves we were football players and decided to do something nice for our country by playing to pay tribute to those who died,” Adebayor told French radio RMC.

“Unfortunately, the head of state and the country’s authorities have made a different decision, so we will pack and go home.”
Togo midfielder Thomas Dossevi told Reuters: “We’re going home, we’re obliged to, the government wants us to. If they are still going to play matches in Cabinda, there will be more problems there. We’re afraid for the other teams.”

But even as the Togolese plane sat on the tarmac at the airport at Cabinda ready to take the team home, a spokesman for the squad said a final decision had not yet been made.

“We are still talking with the players – no decision has been made yet. Everything is possible,” the spokesman said.

Friday’s ambush shows how easily insurgents can grab world headlines with attacks on soft targets and raises questions about security for the World Cup in South Africa in June, but South African President Jacob Zuma dismissed any comparison.

Team media officer Stanislas Ocloo, assistant coach Amalete Abalo and a driver were killed when gunmen from the Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda fired on the team bus in Cabinda, a territory separate from the rest of Angola.

Seven people were wounded including reserve goalkeeper Kodjovi Obilale, who is now in a stable condition in a South African hospital after surgery.