The World Cup, the greatest stage in football upon which all players hunger a desire to appear on, where players can attain hero status, become national heroes or villains, lifelong dreams are often gloriously made or painfully shattered forever and, for one player, Mwepu Ilunga, the World Cup became the greatest moment of his playing career for all the entirely wrong reasons.
West Germany 1974, Zaire (now the DRC) are playing against Brazil, one of the greatest and most talented teams of the seventies. Zaire have conceded a free kick close to their penalty area, and as is tactically traditional, form a defensive wall not far from the Brazilian spot kick. A member of that defensive wall is one Mwepu Ilunga who, for reasons then and still only known to himself (and I'm not even sure he knows why come to think of it....) breaks from the defensive wall and puts his size twelve boot straight through the ball even before the free kick has been taken.
Everyone stops as the ball rockets back down the pitch, Brazilian players waiting to take the free kick stand stunned as they attempt to comprehend what has just played out in front of them. Reaching for his pocket the referee brandishes the deserved yellow card as Mwepu, his arms out wide, pleading innocence, looks generally shocked at the caution. He has also demonstrated his very thin grasp of the rules of Association Football in some spectacular style, but equally, for me, was the architect in chief of the greatest moment in World Cup history, second only to Claudio Caniggia's running the gauntlet of Cameroon hatchet like tackles in Italy 1990 before finally succumbing to the eventual immovable object that was Benjamin Massing.
For me, its these bizarre incidents that make me look forward to the passing of four years until the next World Cup.
