Pearls of Africa can be found in the home
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Pearls of Africa can be found in the home
Pearls of Africa can be found in the home
By EMMA LINDSEY
FOR EVERY AFRICAN PLAYER WHO makes the headlines in Europe, there’s a rags-to-riches story and a huge burden of responsibility. Given the long odds for success, the African Nations Cup, which kicks off on Saturday in Tunisia, is a heroes’ parade. Take Rwanda: synonymous with the genocide that left one in seven of its people dead only a decade ago, the team will be making their debut after an astonishing 1-0 win over Ghana in the qualifiers. It follows that being a footballer’s wife in Africa calls for skills other than professional shopping.
Abedi “Pele” Ayew, three-time African Footballer of the Year and former captain of Ghana’s “Black Stars”, says he wouldn’t be where he is without Maha, his wife of 15 years, and mother to their three children.
They met in Accra in 1982, when he came to her parents’ house with a family friend. “He was young and so was I, just 14. I liked football but hadn’t heard of him,” she recalls. “He left Ghana to play professionally in Qatar, so we spent a lot of hours talking on the phone. I didn’t really expect anything to come of it. I was 19, still at school.”
Her mother, a Ghanaian princess-turned-air hostess, and her Irish father, weren’t keen, and not just because of Pele’s impoverished background. She explains: “It used to be the case that football wasn’t accepted by the community. It was OK if you wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer, but being a footballer was a waste of time. There was no money in it. Because of that my Dad was against the marriage. He said: ‘Football? It’s not a career’. Like any father, he was worried about my future.”
As it turned out, Pele had a prolific international career, with 67 caps for Ghana and stints in Qatar, Italy, Switzerland, Germany and France, where he played for Marseilles, the 1993 European Cup winners. He was one of the first African players to go to Brazil, where he picked up his sobriquet. Back in Africa, playing in Benin, he was spotted and sent to France for trials. “I dropped out of university to join him,” Maha said. “I had a great time, he was at his peak. Not much money but a lot of love and I had two of my kids there.”
She laughs. Maha is as famous as footballer’s wives come in Ghana — “I can get in anywhere, which is cool” — and is hailed everywhere as “Bedi’s wife”, so it seems extraordinary that she shops at the local street markets without the aid of big sunglasses and a minder. Sheer numbers and economic reality means that there isn’t a footballers’ wives clique to join, even if she wanted to. “I have normal friends who are teachers, housewives and so on. I have never been into buying lots of fancy clothes. Raising three children, there is always something better to do with the money than buy designer gear.”
However, some things do translate, like their super-luxe home set in lush grounds. Numerous staff keep things running smoothly while Maha, effortlessly elegant, enjoys an ebullient social life. “I am independent and free-spirited, whereas Pele has always been quiet.”
Yet, with all the wealth, travelling and success, life abroad had its problems. “Pele was hardly around,” she recalls. “When he was playing in big competitions like the European Cup, I’d be lucky if I saw him twice in a week. But I understood that their career is short, they have to make the most of it while they can. You learn to be alone, form your own life around the children and friends. O therwise, you are finished. When we were abroad, the telephone became my best friend.”
With an eye to life after retirement, Maha shrewdly set her husband up with a hobby. “I worried about what he would do without football. It had been his life for so long and there was no one in the same situation to ask for advice, so I decided to start the football club ready for him to take over when he returned.” FC Nania was born and, under the direction of Pele, is evolving into a football academy. It also means there are even more conversations about football. “I like it, which is good because I cannot escape it,” she says with a laugh. His role as an ambassador for the country’s football takes him away on frequent trips abroad, which means he is away from home as much as before.
“I am very proud of him. In another 20 years, African football could be where European football is. A lot of our players are going abroad and gaining more confidence and when they come back they will bring their experience.”
When Mark Fish, the Charlton Athletic defender, was growing up, football in South Africa was a black man’s game. He broke rank when he made the choice to turn his back on cricket, rugby and the rest of the boys at his all-white Pretoria Boys’ High School. He and his younger brother were brought up by their mother after she left their alcoholic father. They lived in one room, sharing a bathroom with people down the hall, on the poor side of town. Because they didn’t have a car, his mother would hitch-hike with his brother in tow to go and watch him play.
Fish’s international career took a turn for the worse recently when he withdrew from the African Nations Cup squad after being refused permission by Ephraim Mashaba, the embattled South Africa coach, to report late for a training camp. With Benni McCarthy, the FC Porto forward, among other European-based players who had pulled out for the same reason, the South Africa Football Association built a case for suspending Mashaba. However, the coach had the decision overturned on appeal to the Johannesburg High Court on Friday and plans to rejoin the squad in Tunisia.
Otherwise, life is as cushioned as the sofa where Fish’s South African wife, Loui, sits describing her husband’s past. A former lingerie model for Playtex, she is tiny, softly spoken and thoughtful. A fire blazes in the hearth and Christmas candles glow with a cosy light. “He is a very special person, whether he’s having lunches with Nelson Mandela or talking to kids in the townships. He treats everyone with equal respect and they all love him.”
Being married to a footballer in England is pretty much how you would imagine it, she says. “When Mark played for Bolton, it was all fur coats and dressed in your best. You weren’t allowed to wear jeans in the players’ lounge. Charlton’s wives are quite relaxed by comparison.”
Although they live in a sumptuous, cream-carpeted house in Chislehurst with three cars — a Mercedes for her, a Spider for him and a big SUV to ferry Luke, 5, and Zeke, 2 — they can walk the streets without being mobbed. In South Africa, they are Posh and Becks. Six years ago, Loui was living in Johannesburg, modelling full time, when she spotted Mark on television and decided she was going to marry him. They met after a fashion show she was in and were engaged a week later in Sun City. They spent a month in Italy, where Mark played for Lazio, then moved to Bolton. She says: “I thought they were talking a foreign language. The weather was miserable and the food was funny but I have made some of my best friends in England there.”
Close friendships, by and large, aren’t to be found among the players’ wives. “Partly it’s that no one stays in one place for long enough and I think there is more competition off the field than on, as far as what you’re wearing, how much your house cost, who your husband is. There is a lot of gossip. I like people who are just normal. Some women didn’t have a lot, then marry a famous footballer and go overboard. One minute they’re wearing Top Shop, the next they’re in Prada.” Her weakness is her friend Jimmy Choo’s shoes, of which she has seven pairs.
A typical day starts with Mark driving Luke to school before training, while Loui wakes up with coffee and the morning papers. “Then I clean the house but no ironing. Mark comes home, we go out for lunch, come home, fetch Luke, start dinner, eat at 6pm, bath the children and put them in bed by 8pm.”
She eschews spa treatments, instead the woman who irons also does threading (hair removal), while Frank Maloney’s wife comes to spray on her tan. In September she was invited to do a bikini front-cover shoot for the South African magazine, FHM. “I had big boobs but they’ve disappeared over the years,” she jokes.
AFRICAN FOOTBALLER'S WIVES
BBC Three, January 24, 10pm
By EMMA LINDSEY
FOR EVERY AFRICAN PLAYER WHO makes the headlines in Europe, there’s a rags-to-riches story and a huge burden of responsibility. Given the long odds for success, the African Nations Cup, which kicks off on Saturday in Tunisia, is a heroes’ parade. Take Rwanda: synonymous with the genocide that left one in seven of its people dead only a decade ago, the team will be making their debut after an astonishing 1-0 win over Ghana in the qualifiers. It follows that being a footballer’s wife in Africa calls for skills other than professional shopping.
Abedi “Pele” Ayew, three-time African Footballer of the Year and former captain of Ghana’s “Black Stars”, says he wouldn’t be where he is without Maha, his wife of 15 years, and mother to their three children.
They met in Accra in 1982, when he came to her parents’ house with a family friend. “He was young and so was I, just 14. I liked football but hadn’t heard of him,” she recalls. “He left Ghana to play professionally in Qatar, so we spent a lot of hours talking on the phone. I didn’t really expect anything to come of it. I was 19, still at school.”
Her mother, a Ghanaian princess-turned-air hostess, and her Irish father, weren’t keen, and not just because of Pele’s impoverished background. She explains: “It used to be the case that football wasn’t accepted by the community. It was OK if you wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer, but being a footballer was a waste of time. There was no money in it. Because of that my Dad was against the marriage. He said: ‘Football? It’s not a career’. Like any father, he was worried about my future.”
As it turned out, Pele had a prolific international career, with 67 caps for Ghana and stints in Qatar, Italy, Switzerland, Germany and France, where he played for Marseilles, the 1993 European Cup winners. He was one of the first African players to go to Brazil, where he picked up his sobriquet. Back in Africa, playing in Benin, he was spotted and sent to France for trials. “I dropped out of university to join him,” Maha said. “I had a great time, he was at his peak. Not much money but a lot of love and I had two of my kids there.”
She laughs. Maha is as famous as footballer’s wives come in Ghana — “I can get in anywhere, which is cool” — and is hailed everywhere as “Bedi’s wife”, so it seems extraordinary that she shops at the local street markets without the aid of big sunglasses and a minder. Sheer numbers and economic reality means that there isn’t a footballers’ wives clique to join, even if she wanted to. “I have normal friends who are teachers, housewives and so on. I have never been into buying lots of fancy clothes. Raising three children, there is always something better to do with the money than buy designer gear.”
However, some things do translate, like their super-luxe home set in lush grounds. Numerous staff keep things running smoothly while Maha, effortlessly elegant, enjoys an ebullient social life. “I am independent and free-spirited, whereas Pele has always been quiet.”
Yet, with all the wealth, travelling and success, life abroad had its problems. “Pele was hardly around,” she recalls. “When he was playing in big competitions like the European Cup, I’d be lucky if I saw him twice in a week. But I understood that their career is short, they have to make the most of it while they can. You learn to be alone, form your own life around the children and friends. O therwise, you are finished. When we were abroad, the telephone became my best friend.”
With an eye to life after retirement, Maha shrewdly set her husband up with a hobby. “I worried about what he would do without football. It had been his life for so long and there was no one in the same situation to ask for advice, so I decided to start the football club ready for him to take over when he returned.” FC Nania was born and, under the direction of Pele, is evolving into a football academy. It also means there are even more conversations about football. “I like it, which is good because I cannot escape it,” she says with a laugh. His role as an ambassador for the country’s football takes him away on frequent trips abroad, which means he is away from home as much as before.
“I am very proud of him. In another 20 years, African football could be where European football is. A lot of our players are going abroad and gaining more confidence and when they come back they will bring their experience.”
When Mark Fish, the Charlton Athletic defender, was growing up, football in South Africa was a black man’s game. He broke rank when he made the choice to turn his back on cricket, rugby and the rest of the boys at his all-white Pretoria Boys’ High School. He and his younger brother were brought up by their mother after she left their alcoholic father. They lived in one room, sharing a bathroom with people down the hall, on the poor side of town. Because they didn’t have a car, his mother would hitch-hike with his brother in tow to go and watch him play.
Fish’s international career took a turn for the worse recently when he withdrew from the African Nations Cup squad after being refused permission by Ephraim Mashaba, the embattled South Africa coach, to report late for a training camp. With Benni McCarthy, the FC Porto forward, among other European-based players who had pulled out for the same reason, the South Africa Football Association built a case for suspending Mashaba. However, the coach had the decision overturned on appeal to the Johannesburg High Court on Friday and plans to rejoin the squad in Tunisia.
Otherwise, life is as cushioned as the sofa where Fish’s South African wife, Loui, sits describing her husband’s past. A former lingerie model for Playtex, she is tiny, softly spoken and thoughtful. A fire blazes in the hearth and Christmas candles glow with a cosy light. “He is a very special person, whether he’s having lunches with Nelson Mandela or talking to kids in the townships. He treats everyone with equal respect and they all love him.”
Being married to a footballer in England is pretty much how you would imagine it, she says. “When Mark played for Bolton, it was all fur coats and dressed in your best. You weren’t allowed to wear jeans in the players’ lounge. Charlton’s wives are quite relaxed by comparison.”
Although they live in a sumptuous, cream-carpeted house in Chislehurst with three cars — a Mercedes for her, a Spider for him and a big SUV to ferry Luke, 5, and Zeke, 2 — they can walk the streets without being mobbed. In South Africa, they are Posh and Becks. Six years ago, Loui was living in Johannesburg, modelling full time, when she spotted Mark on television and decided she was going to marry him. They met after a fashion show she was in and were engaged a week later in Sun City. They spent a month in Italy, where Mark played for Lazio, then moved to Bolton. She says: “I thought they were talking a foreign language. The weather was miserable and the food was funny but I have made some of my best friends in England there.”
Close friendships, by and large, aren’t to be found among the players’ wives. “Partly it’s that no one stays in one place for long enough and I think there is more competition off the field than on, as far as what you’re wearing, how much your house cost, who your husband is. There is a lot of gossip. I like people who are just normal. Some women didn’t have a lot, then marry a famous footballer and go overboard. One minute they’re wearing Top Shop, the next they’re in Prada.” Her weakness is her friend Jimmy Choo’s shoes, of which she has seven pairs.
A typical day starts with Mark driving Luke to school before training, while Loui wakes up with coffee and the morning papers. “Then I clean the house but no ironing. Mark comes home, we go out for lunch, come home, fetch Luke, start dinner, eat at 6pm, bath the children and put them in bed by 8pm.”
She eschews spa treatments, instead the woman who irons also does threading (hair removal), while Frank Maloney’s wife comes to spray on her tan. In September she was invited to do a bikini front-cover shoot for the South African magazine, FHM. “I had big boobs but they’ve disappeared over the years,” she jokes.
AFRICAN FOOTBALLER'S WIVES
BBC Three, January 24, 10pm
