Home 2011 – Brokal
The country
One of Africa’s smallest nations but also one of the richest thanks to abundant offshore oil reserves, Equatorial Guinea first began pumping black gold from its waters in 1995, transforming the country overnight from a sleepy, poverty-stricken backwater with widespread human rights abuses into a sleepy, poverty-stricken backwater with widespread human rights abuses and severely polluted beaches. Sadly, fair distribution of this wealth (or a lack thereof) remains a major issue. Most of the blame for this can be placed squarely at the feet of long-term president/dictator Teodoro Obiang, whose love of fast living (demonstrably), fast cars (probably) and fast women (no longer sure what I’m talking about) has led him to pocket much of the oil revenues in order to fund his own extravagant lifestyle. Still, the covetous cuntbubble is not the worst leader in the country’s history, not even close. That ‘honour’ belongs instead to his predecessor and uncle Francisco Macias Nguema, a man so gloriously deranged that he not only proclaimed himself ‘a god’ and ‘the unique miracle of Africa’ (sure, why not?) but who also, on Christmas Eve 1975, ordered members of his imperial guard to dress up as Santa Claus and then execute 150 political prisoners,* all of whom had presumably landed themselves firmly on that year’s ‘naughty list.’
*No joke, this ACTUALLY happened. Stranger still, the executions were carried out at the national stadium while Mary Hopkin’s 1968 hit single ‘Those Were the Days’ was pumped out from the tannoy speakers.
Ethnically, the majority of Equatoguineans belong to the Fang tribe, famous for their hand-crafted wooden art (especially masks and idols) while the largest minority group are the Boobi people, who were of course named by a twelve year old boy with an upside down calculator. The country’s most famous son (yuletide psychopaths aside) is probably Olympic swimmer Eric “the Eel” Moussambani, who made quite a spluttering, panicky splash at the Sydney 2000 games, barely making it to the end of his 100 metre freestyle heat and yet still technically winning due to being the only one in the pool after both his opponents were disqualified. An epically slow time of 1:52.72 meant no place in the next round for the plucky lifeguard botherer, although in his defence he’d apparently never even seen an Olympic size pool before arriving in Australia much less attempted to traverse one. Anyway, his cult status assured, the ‘incredible drowning eel’ would later become head coach of the national swimming team where, despite a wafer-thin budget forcing them to train in perilously deep lakes, the new recruits were soon able to smash their way through 50 metres of water, but only vertically, and only once.
As you might expect from a tiny country whose most cherished sporting icon is a grown man barely out of armbands, Equatorial Guinea doesn’t exactly boast a wealth of football heritage, although the national team are taking steps to rectify this. Unfortunately, much like their similarly oil-rich Arab counterparts from Qatar, this is often being achieved by playing fast and loose with FIFA’s eligibility rules, and there have been several incidences of squads being stuffed with Brazilian mercenaries where citizenship applications were approved with alarming swiftness and, in some proven cases, their documents falsified entirely. You might be wondering at this point exactly how they’ve managed to get away with such grade A shenanigans, and to be fair it has landed them in a spot of bother from time to time. During qualification for the 2014 World Cup for example, Equatorial Guinea had both of their group matches against Cape Verde retrospectively awarded 3-0 to their opponents (they’d originally won 4-3 and lost 2-1) due to fielding players of dubious lineage, who had managed to slip though what presumably weren’t the most vigorous of background checks.
To date, Equatorial Guinea’s major competition experience consists of just two African Cup of Nations appearance, both of which came as hosts meaning they’ve yet to earn a single qualification on their own merit. In fairness, at the tournaments themselves, the ‘Nzalang Nacional’ (National Lightning) have actually performed beyond all expectations. In 2012 (as co-hosts with Gabon) they felled a highly fancied Senegal side 2-1 in the group stage and advanced to the quarter-finals. Then, three years later in 2015 when staging the finals solo, the team went a step further, reaching the semis thanks largely to a dodgy as fuck injury time penalty against Tunisia in the last eight. See below.
Love how the Tunisian chap who chucks himself to the floor in anger at the decision is still more convincing than the bloke who was supposedly “fouled.”
A 3-0 defeat to Ghana in the semi-finals finally put a end to the hosts unlikely run, and the team subsequently missed out on the 2017 event due to reasons of not actually being very good. On a more promising note, with the AFCON set to expand to 24 teams from the 2019 edition onward, further time in the international spotlight may yet be afoot for the Equatoguineans, or more likely for two dozen awkward looking South Americans trying desperately to resemble their passport photos at the airport border control booth.
The shirt
Perhaps inevitably, the name adorning the back of this Equatorial Guinea shirt does not belong to an Equatoguinean. Instead, Samuel Itondo hails from neighbouring Cameroon, but became naturalised in 2007 and went on to earn four caps for his adopted nation in 2011, scoring two goals to boot. As for the shirt itself, unheralded Spanish sportswear firm Brokal have done a fine job of incorporating all four main colours of the national flag into a sharp looking design, while the gold numbering and letters – not to mention the inclusion of the team’s super cool ‘National Lightning’ nickname on the reverse – all add a touch of elegance.
As far as I can tell, this is the only official Equatorial Guinea kit ever made commercially available. The occasional Adidas version, replete with cheap printed on badge, does surface on ebay every now and then, however these are all guaranteed to be home made fakes. Truth is, I got lucky with this one. My friend and fellow collector Chris (nice name, sloppy spelling) got in touch to inform me he was selling his smashing hoard of polyester and whether I would like first dibs on anything. Well, this is the fruit of those dibs; an ultra-rare beauty of a shirt for a (relatively) low price. Tis not what you know.