You do not get to appreciate the value men attach to sports, and some say war, until you see a man weeping. In days gone by, it was said give a man food and sex and he will rest easy. But food, as we have since learnt, only satiates a need we cannot equate to the beautiful game.
Sex, on the other hand, is a contact game in which neither you nor the woman is the ball.
A recent CNN report also told us that, with variables between couples, the sex act can only last between 2 and 13 minutes, much more time being dedicated to other aspects of the intimacy process.
So men still rush to the stadia or their settees to worship in the temple of high-octane melodrama, where their hearts get broken just as they are uplifted.
Sports, particularly soccer, command a near-religious following in West Africa, as indeed the rest of the continent.
In Latin America, it was suggested that soccer might have overtaken Catholicism as a major reference point for social influence ahead of Germany 2006.
As South Africa 2010 beckons, most African men, and these days women too, are reportedly preparing their pockets for the first World Cup on African soil.
It is to be assumed that with it, we shall have not seen the last of sport-related heart-breaks, hopefully peaceful, on the continent.
It is powerful, this thing over which many remote controls are fought, faces disfigured and dental formulae changed.