African Cup off to bad start

All this time, my big worry about the upcoming African Cup (won by Egypt the last two times in ’06 and ’08) was to hope that there is no Egypt-Algeria rematch in the playoff stage, for reasons I doubt I have to recall.

But it already looks like there are bigger problems for tournament host Angola:

“LUANDA, Angola — Gunmen in an area plagued by separatist violence opened fire Friday on a bus carrying Togo’s national soccer team to a tournament in this southwest African country, wounding at least six people including two players, an official said.

Some players said they wanted to pull out of the African Cup of Nations tournament following the violence, but an official in Angola said it would go ahead as planned.

Togo’s bus in a convoy from Congo was six miles across the border in Angola when it came under fire. The bus driver died in the 30-minute ambush, according to Togo captain Emmanuel Adebayor, who was not hurt.

‘We were machine-gunned like dogs,’ Togo player Thomas Dossevi, who plays for French club Nantes, told Radio Monte Carlo. ‘They were armed to the teeth … We spent 20 minutes underneath the seats of the bus.'”

Personally, I would boycott.