World Cup countdown: James Helm, Dublin correspondent for BBC News, travelled to Togo and found an impoverished, politically unstable nation preparing to take on football's elite
Sittard, Holland. A damp Sunday afternoon. Togo are taking on Saudi Arabia in a World Cup warm-up game at the local stadium. One of those games where the crowd is so small you can not only choose your seat, you can pick your own grandstand.
What they lack in numbers, Togo's supporters, who are grouped behind a goal, are making up for with their noise. The drums beat out a constant rhythm, flags are waved, and the songs are exuberant. For the 200 or so present, many from Holland's Togolese communities, this is the start of a long World Cup party. The game may not have set the turnstiles spinning in Sittard, but the TV pictures being beamed to Africa mean that Togo is watching.
At half-time, as the drummers take a break, a Togolese woman in traditional dress explains what the prospect of her team and her country stepping on to the global stage means to her. "I feel so good about this day. You know, if you say you come from Togo, people don't know where Togo is. It is such a small country. Maybe now, with the World Cup, they will know about Togo."
Her team loses 1-0 to a late Saudi goal, but players and supporters are not too downhearted. Afterwards, before boarding the team bus, the players meet the fans. Many are friends and relatives, and they mingle easily for half an hour, having photos taken, laughing with families, talking to the few journalists.
Most ply their trade in leagues across Europe. One of them, Eric Akoto, a tall midfielder who plays his club football in Austria, tells me: "We appreciate a lot that we're going to the World Cup. Everyone's happy in Togo. I think they all pray for us, that we're going to make a surprise in the World Cup."
His team-mate Erassa Affo, says: "It's a big change in my life, in my future, so I'm very happy. We have difficult opponents, they are some of the biggest teams in the world, but we will try our best. I want to play against Zidane, I want to play against Henry. So I have to work hard before I play them."
In Lomé, Togo's capital, one of the first things you notice is that football is everywhere. On back streets flooded by the deluges of the rainy season, on waste ground that is ankle-deep in water, and on the long expanse of sand beside the Atlantic Ocean.
In this French-speaking country of five million, wedged between Ghana and Benin, the surprise of reaching the World Cup finals for the first time has given way to sheer, undiluted excitement at the prospect of taking on South Korea, Switzerland, and, best of all, France in Group G.
As evening descends, a couple of hundred young men somehow squeeze into a square shed beneath a corrugated tin roof. They buy tickets to sit on wooden benches, and gaze up at the big TV screen until the match begins. It's the night of the Champions League final, and while the street outside is quiet, the noise inside is ear-splitting. Some cheer for Barcelona, and wear the team's shirts. Others scream for Arsenal, the club where Togo's national hero, Emmanuel Adebayor, plays. When the satellite pictures peter out, as they do throughout the first half, a deep groan goes up.
By day, in and around the busy Grande Marche, once one of West Africa's most important commercial hubs, stallholders are selling the yellow replica shirts of Les Eperviers, the Hawks, as Togo's national team is known. Adebayor's name is printed on the back of most.
On a pavement, a man in his early 20s is wearing a Barca shirt and scrubbing some fridges. His face lights up when I ask him about the World Cup. "The World Cup to me is like a big celebration. For the first time Togo has qualified and that is great, it's something we should rejoice about."
And the prospect of playing France, the old colonial master? "I expect Togo to perform well. I believe we will win against France."
The recent history of the Togo team has been, to use the parlance, a game of two halves. First came the triumph of qualification from a tough African group, where they saw off Senegal, conquerors of the then World Cup holders, France, four years ago. Adebayor was top scorer, and along with fellow African qualifiers Angola, Ivory Coast and Ghana, Togo reached the finals for the first time.
After that high came the disaster of this year's African Nations Cup. Three defeats, poor performances and turmoil within the camp as the star, Adebayor, fell out with the coach, Stephen Keshi, a Nigerian who played for his own nation at the 1994 World Cup in the United States.
THE RESPONSE of the head of Togo's football federation, Commandant Rock Gnassingbe, was to get rid of the coach and bring in a new man, a 69-year-old German, Otto Pfister, a veteran of African football. For Herr Pfister and his players, the countdown to the World Cup has been as littered with potholes as some of Lomé's streets.
When they qualified last October, in the final game against Congo, delirious crowds rushed on to those streets to celebrate. Such was their exuberance that the authorities responded by switching off the electricity. The lights went out on Lomé's party. Imagine that happening in Limerick on Munster's big night.
Having been ushered into his air-conditioned office, the Prime Minister, Edem Kodjo, told me he wouldn't rule out such action again. But he also stressed the positive: "The whole of the Togolese people is united behind Les Eperviers. It's something very impressive and very positive. I think football is bringing unity in this country."
And unity - in this case based on sporting success - has been in short supply in Togo in recent times. Last year its president, Gnassingbe Eyadema, Africa's longest-serving ruler, died after 38 years in power. His son, Faure Gnassingbe, took over. He called elections, which he duly won, but the result was disputed. Riots and bloodshed on Lomé's street followed. Bitter political divisions remain, while a "dialogue", aimed at charting a way forward, continues.
Jean-Paul Fabre is the leader of one of the opposition parties, the UFC, and he stresses with a smile that his party's colour, yellow, is also that worn by Les Eperviers. But he shakes his head at the suggestion that footballing success can lead to political unity, rejecting the idea that sport can solve the rest of the country's woes.
Beside the crashing waves of the Atlantic, I watched the players from Goliath FC train. Despite their name, it's a small, lower-division club. The talent on show, however, was special. They train here once a week, barefooted, and the control, the agility, the all-round technique of the 30 or so players on view was impressive. Getting into the spirit, I whipped off my shoes and socks and tried to bend free-kicks past a tall young goalkeeper who was wearing a Chelsea shirt. I might as well have been facing Petr Cech. I was left with red feet and a red face, as he leapt across the sand to keep out my best efforts.
The club president, René Vivon, is a coffin-maker. The money he makes from the business of death is ploughed into Goliath FC. One day, he says, he hopes to see a return on that investment if one of his players makes it with a big European club. Judging by the skills and application on show, that may not be wishful thinking for M Vivon.
In a country where the average income is little more than a dollar a day, it's perhaps not surprising to find an infrastructure that is severely limited. The leading two teams have stadiums, as does the national team, but beyond that the choice of pitches and training grounds is, well, limited. So teams train on the beach partly out of necessity. There's little sign that the financial benefits from the success of the national team are filtering down to help the clubs. What they have are the proceeds of M Vivon's carpentry skills and an abundance of talent.
And if the Togo team needs some extra help, then they can counton the help of Togbe, a voodoo chief. Traditional voodoo beliefs persist in Togo, and Togbe is planning to travel to Europe with two helpers to do whatever they can. He said: "With voodoo we are trying to help our team in the World Cup. We are going to Germany and the team will go far."
So once the dust settles on Germany 2006, once the televisions have been switched off and the kickabouts have resumed in the back streets, will it all have made any difference at all to Togo - its people, their lives, and their futures?
Klaus Gunther Grossman's post gives him a special insight into the World Cup, its meaning to the Togolese people, and its potential to bring change here. He is the German Ambassador in Lomé, as well as a keen football fan. He thinks that reaching the event in Germany offers the Togolese a big chance to raise the country's profile. "I think this is a unique opportunity for this country to present itself. Togo is a small country. I think this gives the chance to present Togolese culture, Togolose politics, even the possibility of investment in this country."
Meanwhile, in the small town of Wangen in Germany, time is getting short for one of Herr Grossman's countrymen. Otto Pfister is shaping his team and his tactics. Among his new arrivals is 18-year-old Assimiou Toure, an attacking right back who plays his club football with the German club Bayer Leverkusen and, with his skills, will hold dangers for the other Group G teams.
Togo's was the first squad to arrive in Germany ahead of the tournament. Needs must. Pfister has coached sides across the continent. He got the job when Keshi was sacked in January, so now he's getting his first proper length of time with the players, sizing them up before the first game, against South Korea. Ahead of the friendly with Saudi Arabia in Sittard, some of the players also met up for the first time, from clubs in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Tunisia and beyond.
Togo are outsiders, a small West African state which many World Cup viewers will have difficulty placing on a map. Pfister is aware of the challenges ahead, but he also knows that a football-mad country is watching, full of hope and expectation. "It is like a religion," he told me after training. "Everybody is behind the team, from grandfather to baby. When Togo plays a game, no one is in the street."
James Helm's programme on Togo's World Cup odyssey is to be broadcast on Assignment on BBC World Service Radio on Thursday June 8th at 9.06am, 12.06pm and 8.06pm, and at 9.06am on Saturday June 10th.
