When we hear about League teams complaining about the playing time that they have to give up for their stars to play for a National team we usually just scoff and say “Get over it!”  However, now we see why people complain.

The Togolese National Soccer Team’s bus was attacked by machine gun-toting lunatics at the Angola border today ahead of the African Nations Cup.  Basically, there’s no reason for this kind of senseless violence and there isn’t any way that Soccer can be THAT serious, but this is the world we live in today.

When you read the story and you see players talking about hiding under the seats of the bus for 15 minutes while someone was shooting at them it’s just hard to imagine and what makes it even worse is the toll it takes on the players.  One player was quoted as saying

“I’m fine, but several players are in a bad way.”

You think!?  I can’t imagine walking down the street much less playing in a gigantic arena in front of screaming fans and wondering where the next bullet’s going to come from.

I’ll keep it short and sweet.  This sucks.  Violence sucks.  And Soccer is NOT this serious.