Tony Yeboah

"This month our regular columnist Peter Ndlovu recalls an unsavoury incident from the African Cup of Nations.

Things have been quiet this month so when I sat down to write this article my mind went blank. Although the following tale has very little to do with the game of football, fans will still find it quite entertaining.

It is from the 2006 African Nations Cup in Egypt. 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 Tony Yeboah along (fans of English football will remember him from his highly successful period with Leeds United) as he had been watching the match.

The lads started giving Tony a lot of stick for his country's loss, especially our head coach Charles Mhlauri. Tony 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 Tony. Now during the whole tournament Charles 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 Charles who we found in bed, it was Tony Yeboah. The worst part was that he was having sex with Charles' 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 Tony to the party! We found Charles in one of the hotel bathrooms. He had had far too much to drink and crashed out.

The next morning, at breakfast, I quizzed Tony 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"

Charles 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 p*ss off Tony Yeboah!"