In a move that has left the footballing world more bewildered than a goalkeeper facing a knuckleball, the Democratic Republic of Congo has ordered its national team into isolation ahead of the World Cup. The directive, issued by the nation’s football federation, comes not as a desperate measure to contain a new viral variant, but as a preemptive strike against the pernicious influence of... prawn sandwiches? Agent provocateurs? The ghost of colonialism? Let us not be hasty.
The Leopards, as the team is known, will be holed up in a training camp somewhere in the Congolese rainforest, accessible only by canoe and sheer force of will. The authorities claim this is to ‘ensure the health and focus of the players,’ a phrase that in any other context might be accompanied by a gentle pat on the head and a ‘there, there, little Leopard.’ But no. This is football. This is war. This is the World Cup, which for many nations is merely a quadrennial opportunity to break wind during the national anthem without consequence.
The isolation order, reportedly, forbids all contact with the outside world. That means no phone calls, no Twitter spats with rival supporters, no sneaky handjobs in the shower. It is a monastic existence, albeit one with better football boots. The players are to be sequestered in a bubble, like a caricature of a government minister caught with their hand in the cookie jar, only with more sprinting and less embezzlement.
But why? Why this draconian measure? Is it to prevent the players from catching COVID? The humble coronavirus, which has held the world hostage for two years, is so 2021. No, the real threat is something far more insidious. It is the lure of European club football. The siren call of the Premier League, the whisper of Champions League bonuses. The Congolese federation, in their infinite wisdom, have decided that the only way to keep their players focused on the collective dream of World Cup glory is to cut them off from the seductive promises of agents, transfers, and the frankly obscene amounts of money that slosh around the beautiful game like a leaky toilet in a mansion.
There is precedent, of course. Nations have routinely isolated their teams before major tournaments, locking them away in remote training camps with only a few deflated footballs and a copy of ‘The Art of War’ for company. But this feels different. This feels like a statement. A big fat middle finger to globalisation. A cry of ‘we are not your puppets, you gilded parasites.’ It is the sound of a nation taking back control from the footballing empires that have plundered their talent for decades. Or it could just be a cunning ploy to stop the players from getting gout from too many luxury biscuits. One can never be sure.
The isolation, it must be noted, is not entirely voluntary. There are whispers of fines and contractual obligations, of threats to rescind national team call-ups. The carrot is the World Cup; the stick is a rusty machete. The players have little choice but to comply, becoming prisoners of their own ambition. But then, what is a footballer if not a prisoner of their own talent, trapped in a cycle of adulation and exhaustion, forever chasing the next trophy like a dog after a car? The isolation merely makes it official.
In the grand scheme of things, this is a mere footnote in the annals of footballing eccentricity. It does not rank with the time the Paraguayan team tried to smuggle a Paraguayan bus driver into the World Cup squad, or the Zaire side of 1974 that played Brazil with a voodoo curse. But it has a certain poetry. A group of men, isolated from the world, tasked with representing their nation in the global theatre. It is a metaphor for the human condition, if the human condition involved a lot of stepovers and sliding tackles.
So let us raise a glass of cheap gin to the DR Congo Leopards. May their isolation be fruitful, their WiFi strong, and their prawn sandwiches strictly forbidden. The World Cup awaits, and it demands total commitment, or at least the semblance of it from behind a barbed-wire fence.
