Black Queens in the 'burbs

[September 24th, 2003] On a recent chilly afternoon, Alberta Sackey sat in Tigard's Shilo Inn and promised to shock the soccer world.

"We go in as the underdog," acknowledged the 31-year-old captain of Ghana's national women's team. "But we are ready for them, and we are not afraid."

Brave words. By any reckoning but their own, Ghana's Black Queens are the longest long shot in the Women's World Cup. The tournament, which stages six matches at PGE Park starting Sunday, is a Jurassic Park of soccer super-predators. Precise Germans, cocky Norwegians and America's Title IX poster girls stalk the 16-team field. Ghana's first opponent, China, came within a Brandi Chastain striptease of winning the '99 Cup.

Experts expect Ghana--a team of semi-pros and small-time U.S. college players--to make a quick cameo. And they may be right. China survived a scrappy challenge from the Queens to win 1-0 Sunday night. Ghana faces Russia in L.A. on Thursday and Australia in Portland on Sunday. Only two of these four teams will advance to the quarterfinals.

For players from a country where some believe playing soccer makes women infertile, survival will be a tall order. "It was a taboo for a long time," says Queens head coach Oko Aryee. "Now, because of the Black Queens, it is improving."

Still, though the Queens qualified for World Cups in 1999 (when China massacred them in Portland, 7-0) and again this year, they fight for respect on a shoestring budget. According to some associated with the Queens, Ghana's soccer federation devotes more resources to its men's team, the Black Stars, which has never made the men's Cup.

The women from Ghana, however, refuse to bow to low expectations or lukewarm support. The Queens stepped off a plane at PDX in early August--weeks before any other visiting World Cup team landed in the States--and into the welcoming embrace of unlikely allies in their quixotic quest: suburban Portland soccer parents, members in good standing of the Minivan Nation.

Without really knowing what hit them, members of the Southside Soccer Club, a Tigard youth outfit, found themselves plunged into the messy logistics of a World Cup campaign. Parents and a few friends helped book warm-up games from one end of the Northwest to the other. They finessed diplomats. They feuded with Canada's national team coach ("a jerk, and you can quote me," says Southside's Mike Morris). They drove the vans. They tried to keep the Queens' Italian sponsor happy. They braced for a visit from Ghana's minister of youth and sports.

"It's been a blur," says Dana Lyon, a Doc Martens-wearing Tualatin woman whose son plays for Southside. "Some of the politics have been intense."

This experiment in sports globalization, which transformed the suburban Shilo Inn into a detached chunk of Africa, can be traced to Simon Osei-Agyemang, a Ghana native who has lived in Tigard for three years. His daughter Mimi, a lanky 21-year-old who graduated from Columbia last spring, plays for the Black Queens. In January, Osei-Agyemang flew to Nigeria to watch Africa's Cup qualifying tournament. Though the Queens landed one of the continent's two bids, what he saw worried him.

"African teams like a flashy style," he says. "But teams in the U.S. favor direct, well-organized attack. And because the U.S. is the best, most World Cup teams play that way, too." His solution: let Aryee bring the Queens here early to acclimate the women to the States and forge 20 players speaking five different languages into a cohesive squad.

Aryee visited Osei-Agyemang late last winter. With its tightknit Ghanaian community and plush soccer infrastructure, Portland made an attractive destination for the Queens.

Osei-Agyemang soon hooked up with Southside's Morris, a veteran Portland soccer organizer. Morris offered his club's help.

Little did he know: A few months later, Morris is Ghana's official World Cup liaison officer, a fixer/arranger/problem-solver booked to follow the team throughout its Cup run. According to him, the job has required some psychic realignment.

"I'm pretty anal, and they're just not," Morris says of the Ghana players, coaches and support staff. "It's probably a better way to live, overall."

Meanwhile, Lyon took on diplomacy. When Ghana's D.C. embassy held up the team's uniforms--something about the shipping--Lyon,
by her account, turned aggro.

"Oh, they were nasty phone calls," she says. "The Ghana folks, of course, owe allegiance to their embassy. But I don't."

Uniforms arrived. Warm-up games--including matches against Portland State, the University of Portland and, after heated discussions, Canada--came off. Amazingly, Southside's haphazard brush with international soccer left it wanting more. Morris and Osei-Agyemang are trying to swing a deal that would make Tigard the permanent home of the Black Queens' annual training camp.

As for the Queens themselves, all they want to do is change the way people think back home.

"If we do well, there will be a revolution," says Aryee. "The other teams, some of them are giants. But we do not fear any team. We know that in football, anything can happen."