It means his eyes are "really red" (bloodshot). And they are bloodshot not because he is ill but because his adrenaline level is way above the measurable zone.
Why is today such a crucial day for Ghanaians? Our Black Stars are meeting the stars and stripes of the USA in a World Cup match that will determine whether either side will proceed to the next round of the tournament.
The whole group is in a sort of flux. The equation of who will get to what position if who does what is almost literally quadrilateral, for Italy and the Czech Republic will also be affected not only by what happens in their match against each other but also by the result of the Ghana-USA match. This is how one football "mathematician" put it:
This group [E] is still wide open. Italy lead with four points and know that a draw ... will see them win the group. Like Ghana, the Czech Republic have three points but they have a better goal difference and would thus qualify for the next round with a draw if Ghana fails to win. The USA has just one point but could also still qualify for the next round if they win their final match against Ghana and the Czech Republic loses. They would also go through if they win by a four-goal margin and the Czechs draw.
Now do you see why today be today? The international betting school is also busy calculating the odds:
For Ghana and the rest of Africa, the game between Ghana and the USA will be a sort of "grudge match" with implications going way beyond the football field.
Millions of Africans were carted out of Africa under very cruel conditions to work as the slaves who helped to build America up into the economic superpower she is today. But the descendants of those African slaves have not been allowed to enjoy the fruits of the labours of their ancestors in a commensurate measure.
Never mind. Despite the disappointments that followed emancipation, black Americans have in war and in peace, and in sport especially, sought to bring glory to their adopted motherland.
But they have often been rejected - so much so that one group of super-athletes chose the world stage of the Olympic games to exhibit the famous Black Power salute in protest against American racism. Their white rulers execrated them, of course, for doing so.
Even worse punishment awaited Muhammad Ali when he turned his back on white America's war against the Vietnamese people and refused to be drafted to go and kill "brown people" who had "done nothing" against him.
America also presides over the global capitalist system, which ensures that an African who grows cocoa in Ghana or coffee in Uganda obtains about a 20th - if that - of the proceeds of his crop. Meanwhile, fat cigar-chewers in Wall Street as well as speculators scattered around Europe and America (to say nothing of Starbucks, Hershey, Cadbury-Schweppes and Nestle) all lap up huge sums of money streaming from a crop some of them only ever see in the form of paper contracts.
Therefore, to adapt the question of the great West Indian cricket writer CLR James: "Who knows soccer who only soccer knows?" When the supporters of Trinidad and Tobago suppressed lumps in their throats when their tiny country failed, narrowly, to bloody the nose of "ungrateful" England, what were they saying deep inside themselves?
Most blacks, and certainly nearly all Africans, will be rooting for Ghana. One Ugandan, writing from Germany, tells how after the Ghana-Czech Republic match, in which Ghana walloped the Czechs 2-0, a Malaysian approached him, shook his hand and asked: "Are you from Ghana?"
The Ghana Black Stars are well aware of this - despite the total naivety shown by one of their number, who for a lark ineptly displayed the Star of David rather than the Ghanaian flag on the day we beat the Czechs.
What most Ghanaians won't know is that in astronomical symbolism, today's match is very heavily weighted indeed: the stars and stripes versus a "black hole" waiting to swallow them. Or could that perhaps be the even denser and more recently discovered dark matter?
OK. Today be today ( And it certainly was )
Catch me on the first and third Monday of every month
7 AM and 4PM PST
TRUTHTALK
on Conscious Talk Radio with Brenda Michaels &
Rob Spears
