On November 20, the FIFA World Cup opened in Qatar. At least, the Senegal national team will play their first matches without their main star, Bayern striker Sadio Mane.
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In the game with Nuremberg, Mane suffered a tendon injury.
– This is very important and sad news. We will turn to our shamans for help. This time we will beg them. We hope for a miracle,” said FIFA Secretary General Fatma Samura.
Officially, sorcerers are banned in Senegal. But clubs and the national team continue to use their services. They do not want to give advantages to other teams of the Black Continent. It is not for nothing that the African Cup is called the “shaman championship”. The Senegal national team connects the victory at the 2002 World Cup over formidable France with the work of the regular sorcerer Ngoy Mbaye.
– We were then otmarabutili – complained the defender of the world champions Emmanuel Petit.
In Senegal they are called marabouts. For the treatment of football players, craftsmen practice traditional medicine methods. In particular, they put Juventus midfielder Paul Pogba on his feet. The player paid about 4 million euros for the services of the fortune-teller Grande.
Sheldon Ritter, a businessman from New York, spoke about the sorcerers of Africa. The poor fellow was limping heavily, spent $75,000 on treatment in the US, but the doctors were powerless.
– During a business trip to Senegal, I was taken to a marabout. He sat me down on a chair, felt my knee and took a rusty can with a dirty rag inside. He rubbed my knee with it, and then made 18 cuts on my leg with an old knife. Dark blood leaked into the jar. Then the sorcerer wiped my knee with brown powder. He promised that in two days I would stop limping. And so it happened,” Ritter recalls.
So Sadio Mane’s tendon is in safe hands.
By the way
– 70 percent of the players from Nigeria, Cameroon and Ghana believe more in buzz magic than in modern medicine, – Peter Odemwingie, ex-striker of Lokomotiv Moscow, Lille and the Nigerian national team, admitted.
Photo source: Legion-Media