Let’s play a game of myth or truth about Ghanaian football, shall we?

One: Ghana was once defeated 99-1 by India in an international friendly game. Ghana’s goal scorer died on the day. Throughout play, the ball transformed into a beast and sphere of fire. The Indians, voodoo-laden, entered the pitch from a hole inside the center circle…

Well, what in the Shaolin Soccer?! Of course, myth. A ridiculous one at that.

Two: A Ghanaian international striker named Wilberforce Mfum tore a goal net with a shattering shot sometime in the 1960s.

This is tricky. Guess?

Truth. It happened. In 1963. In Accra. In an Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) game. Against Tunisia. That must’ve been something for those who witnessed it.

Right. Number three: A striker once struck the goalpost with a shot during a game at the Accra Sports Stadium. He complained after the game that the goalpost’s positioning wasn’t accurate, because he knew goalposts inside out and he knew that anytime he struck that kind of shot, it surely ended up in the net. After an expert was brought in to measure the goalpost, it turned out the striker was right. The striker was a genius.

Again, guess?

Truth. It happened. In 1969. 

That striker was a Brazilian called Edson Arantes do Nascimento. 

Everyone across the globe called him Pele.

How did Pele, affectionately nicknamed O Rei (The king), then the world’s greatest, richest, and most sought-after footballer, end up in Ghana?

Well, the story goes that Santos, the Brazilian super club Pele played at for most of his career—and where he was declared a national treasure by the Brazilian government, placing an embargo on any transfer abroad—toured Africa in 1969. The tour took the club to Algeria, Congo-Brazzaville, DR Congo, Mozambique, Nigeria, and Ghana.

But Ghana wasn’t originally on the list.

The Santos team—consisting of 26 players and officials—touched down in Ghana on a 15-hour transit en route to Mozambique on January 27, 1969. The Ghana Amateur Football Association (GAFA) seized the opportunity to talk to them about adding the country to their tour list. 

After bureaucratic back-and-forth negotiations, GAFA, fueled by funding from the Ghana government, met Santos’ beaten-down demand of $30,000 to make it possible for Pele and the team to play a game in Ghana.

Interestingly, it was not the first time Ghana welcomed a global football superstar. 

In 1957, the West African nation brought in the great Sir Stanley Matthews, fresh off winning the first Ballon d’Or in 1956. That visit, according to many historians and experts, was the pivotal point that propelled Ghana to global football prominence in the 1960s, winning two Afcon titles and becoming the first sub-Saharan African nation to play at the Olympics.

In the ensuing years, arguably the best players of that generation visited Ghana. Legendary Soviet goalkeeper Lev Yashin visited in 1958 with his club Dynamo Moscow. German World Cup winner Erich Juskowiak visited in 1959 with Fortuna Dusseldorf. Spain’s Alfredo Di Stefano and Hungary’s Ferenc Puskas visited with Real Madrid in 1962, and 1966 World Cup winner, English goalkeeper Gordon Banks, visited with Stoke City in 1968.

After the successful deal between GAFA and Santos, the Brazilians—who were at that point one of the most powerful teams in the world, with two continental titles and two world titles to their credit—came back to Ghana on February 5, 1969. 

They were to play a game against giants Hearts of Oak, Ghana’s oldest club, because there was not enough time for GAFA to assemble the national team, the Black Stars, to camp for the game.

Hearts of Oak, though, were ready to make Ghana proud. Santos had drawn 2-2 with Ghana’s archrivals Nigeria a few days before, with Pele scoring a brace. The stakes were high. 

Pele, arriving at the Accra Airport, said there had been a “great improvement” in the performance of African clubs since Santos’ first Africa tour in 1968. “No doubt, soccer in Africa is fast improving,” he added. 

Hearts were ready to be testaments of that improvement. “Damn the results!” a spokesperson for Hearts told the press. “We are going to make Pele feel like he has been in a match.”

A partial holiday was declared by the government on Thursday, February 6, to enable fans to enjoy the game. The tickets sold out within a short period between the announcement and matchday.

It was in this game, described by the press as “the match of a lifetime,” that Pele famously, if not ferociously, shook the goalpost which he deemed was not properly situated. 

Before the game, an anonymous sportswriter had suggested that since this was Pele’s last tour of Africa (he was set to retire after the 1970 World Cup in Mexico), he had to “leave a mark that would survive the years.”

“To him, this tour—and tomorrow’s match—must be something more than the appearance of a great man,” he wrote.

But, during the match, Pele’s play profoundly plummeted, according to the press. For them, it was disappointing that “The greatest character in the modern world of football” and “the cynosure of all eyes” was “not at his best.” Pele, then a 28-year-old two-time World Cup winner, actually scored in the game, which ended 2-2. It was one of eight goals (in nine matches) Pele would manage during the tour and one of 1,281 he would score in his career. Perhaps Ghanaians expected extraterrestrial entertainment.

Pele’s visit may not have had the immeasurable impact Sir Stanley’s visit did 12 years earlier, but it was a lasting landmark nonetheless, leaving a legacy however light. 

Gingered, Ghana went on to finish second at the 1970 Afcon. And for Hearts, who were in their eighth year without a trophy, it ushered in the successful 1970s, a decade in which they won the league four times and played in two Africa Cup finals.