As the story of the attack on the Togo national team coach broke today I couldn’t help put myself in the situation of the athletes on board.  OK, there may be questions asked about driving through a volatile region, but as professional athletes travelling during a tournament, surely none of them really expected to have their coach sprayed with machine gun fire.  In fact, for that matter, apart from soldiers and mercenaries, who really does expect to have “machine gun fire” associated with anything they do?

I found myself wondering what was going through the minds of the footballers and staff on board the bus, the fear and terror was literally unimaginable.  Surely the surreal nature of a life based in cold, wet Birmingham playing reserve football for Aston Villa and visiting sick children in the local hospice must have gone though his mind as bullets ripped apart the steel and glass surrounding him.  If you’re a Togolese footballer, that’s got to be a bad day at the office.

But tonight, after several Stella Artois (other beers are available) and quite possibly more peanuts than a human should eat in one setting, I got to thinking about what it must have been like for the Angolan terrorists, or douche nozzles as they’re often known.

I thought about what it was like to be an uneducated 14 year old handed an AK-47 and instructed to pepper a coach of rich footballers with bullets by the local warlord.  Bunch of overpaid pussies, right?  This will be easy, smoke me a kipper I’ll be back for breakfast.

And then I remembered Moustapha Salifou and realised that if you happen to be a 14 year old Angolan terrorist out on a mission, seeing this would represent a very, very bad day at the office for you…

That’s right. He’s just that awesome!!

As a disclaimer, I’d just like to point out that I fully recognise the gravitas of today’s events and have personally been affected more than I would have ever dreamed possible. However, I mean no disrespect to the deceased or injured, I just wanted to lighten the mood a little.