England face DR Congo in the World Cup on Wednesday afternoon, a round-of-32 tie clinched after the African nation – formerly known as Zaire – beat Uzbekistan
I visited Congo many years ago – when it was still called Zaire. And I vividly remember talking to a young lad whose only knowledge of English was the names of football players. “Gary Lineker, Gary Lineker, Gary Lineker” he proudly repeated as we tried to have a conversation. It was two years after the 1986 World finals and we were on the shore of Lake Kivu. He was fishing and I’d stopped off on a cross east Africa journey. I was 23 and and he was, perhaps, 14 and 15 and we had bizarre conversation about football. He used his arm to pretend to punch the ball in the net and laughed: “Maradona.” But Lineker was the name he was most proud of knowing.
Just six years later and the whole region was devastated by the Rwandan genocide which had a huge impact on surrounding countries including Zaire. At the time I wondered if he’d survived. The conversation always stayed with me because it illustrated the power of football around the world.
TV legend Michael Parkinson used to tell tales how he was inside the arctic circle and when he spoke to locals the only English words they knew were “Bobby Charlton”, “Bobby Moore” and “Gordon Banks”
The Daily Mirror has had long links with Congo. One of the greatest reporters in our 123 year history was Don Wise.
Wise, who died aged 80 in 1998, spent weeks bravely reporting from the Congo. In 1963 he famously wrote a piece for the Mirror entitled: “Britain’s Blunders in the Congo.”
He went to the country on six separate occasions to give our readers as our “man on the spot” eyewitness accounts to what was happening
And of course in 1974 our front page reported on one of the greatest boxing match-ups of all the time.
The so-called ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ saw Muhammad Ali beat George Foreman. in teh capital Kinshasa. Foreman chatted to me about it on his visit to the UK.
Now Congo play England in the World Cup final. It’s a dream come true for the African side and will bring back many memories of their only other appearance in the finals in West Germany back in 1974.Then they lost three games to Scotland, the then Yugoslavia and Brazil.
