Joseph Langabel has shockingly revealed how the Black Satellites of Ghana won the U-20 Fifa World Cup in Egypt in 2009.
The Ghana U-20 team, after a shaky start to the tournament, played Brazil in the final and won on penalty shootouts to become the first-ever African country to win the U-20 FIFA World Cup in Egypt.
Speaking on Accra based Peace FM, Mr Langabel, who was the chief drummer, revealed that he and another member named Zacoco had to undertake spiritual directions on behalf of the team.
According to him, the direction was to gift seven mentally-challenged people (six men, one woman) food and money termed as ‘Salakah’ before the game.
“To find these mad people, Zacoco and I will have to search the entire city of Cairo. We set off on our trek and gave money and bread to every man we encountered. We were left with one female insane person after a long search. We looked and looked and looked,” Mr Langabel, who is an Accra Great Olympics supporter, said.
“So we gave the woman money and bread. Zacoco knows Arabic so he always spoke to them in Arabic before we gave them the bread and money and then we were set.”
He further recounted that the late Jordan Anagblah, who was a management committee member of the team, instructed them to perform another sacrifice that he believed won the trophy for Ghana.
“When we got back to the hostel then we called Jordan and he asked us if we were set and we said yes and he said there is another sacrifice we need to make but for that, I won’t say it here. We did so many things I can’t say here. So we did all that and the man that’s Jordan Anagblah’s father who was blind told us that we will take the trophy.”
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“He said we will win the match but it will be difficult for us and he added that there will be two red cards in the match. Everything happened and by the grace of God we took the cup so when Aziz says there is something in football that’s true,” he narrated.
During the final game, the Black Satellites went down by one man in the first half after Daniel Addo was sent off in the 37th minute.
Sellas Tetteh’s men fought through to push the game all the way to penalty shootout after a match that went 120 minutes saw no goal.
Ghana won the shootout 4-3 with former Black Stars midfielder, Emmanuel Agyemang Badu, scoring the winning penalty.