This Is The Story of the World’s Greatest Soccer Team

Dancing Rasta with his locks held together in a bun at the back. Cool Joe with his afro and his comb perched in his hair even during the game. Let’s not pretend that we didn’t play soccer with combs in our hair because we wanted to be cool like Cool Joe. Big Mo, and ile kipara yake bigi, clean-shaven, his head glinting under the spotlights. Who was that one with the hair plaited in neat lines, the one who went to play for Palmintieri in Brazil? Soipei. Halafu Shakes Makena, main man mwenyewe, with that spiky hair of his.

Later, there was Twisting Tiger (red flaming hair) and El Matador (hair tied back in a ponytail) and The Blok (blonde, with bangs covering his eyes) and sijui who else and sijui what other hair, but that’s later. For now, we look at watu wetu wa kwanza: the firsts.

Pale Strikaland, three in the afternoon. Lunchtime kickoff. Supa Strikas against Mighty Shabbs, whose owner/president Martin always dressed in purple drug-lord suits and had a puffy drug-lord beard and wore glinting drug-lord rings on his fingers. Mighty Shabbs, whose defensive stalwart was Ogonga Thom, a bruising defender with a penchant for disregarding the rules, and who played Dirty with a capital D. Mighty Shabbs, whose star player Moseti Ndung’u was agemates with Shakes, and in fact they had been childhood nemeses, and in fact they