Ex-Zimbabwe striker lifts the lid on hotel steamrollering incident

In his monthly column on footyhighlights.com, Peter Ndlovu recalls a salacious incident from the Africa Cup of Nations 2006:

We had just played our final group game, ending on a high by beating a strong Ghana side but still crashing out of the tournament. At the hotel that night we decided to have a few drinks and toast to our victory. I had invited my friend, who I can’t name for legal reasons (fans of English football will remember him from his highly successful period with Leeds United), along as he had been watching the match.

The lads started giving my friend a lot of stick for his country’s loss, especially our head coach. My friend was taking it quite gracefully but, as a proud Ghanaian, I could sense his patience was wearing thin. Nevertheless, the drinks kept flowing and so did the jokes.

It came to the end of the night and some of the lads had disappeared to bed, most notably our coach and my friend. Now during the whole tournament the manager had personally entered the hotel rooms of our most lazy players (Benjani was the worst) and pulled them out of bed in the morning to get ready for training so myself and a couple of the other lads decided to repeat the routine on him. We got the keys from reception and seven of us bundled into his hotel room at 4 a.m. To our horror it was not our coach who we found in bed, it was my friend. The worst part was that he was having sex with the coach’s wife!

I quickly rounded the boys up and ushered them out of the room, frantically hoping to keep a lid on the situation. After all, it was I who invited him to the party! We found the coach in one of the hotel bathrooms. He had had far too much to drink and crashed out.

The next morning, at breakfast, I quizzed my friend about what happened and he delivered a line which I will remember all my life:

“When a man insults my country, I insult him by taking his woman“

Our manager did eventually find out about the incident and I think he separated from his wife for a period. The last I heard though was that they are back together and he’s now coaching in the USA.

The moral of the story is never to slag off someone’s country!

Ndlovu is hardly subtle about revealing the identity of his ‘friend’. A Ghanian striker who was successful at Leeds? He might as well have titled the story ‘Don’t let Tony Yeboah near your wife.’