Mwepu Ilunga knew exactly what he was doing

At the 1974 World Cup in West Germany, Zaire faced Brazil in a group match at the Parkstadion in Gelsenkirchen. Brazil were awarded a free kick. Before it could be taken, Zaire's Mwepu Ilunga broke from the defensive wall and hammered the ball away downfield. The referee cautioned him — a yellow card. He was not sent off.

The clip has circulated ever since as a piece of football comedy: a player from a side that had qualified for a World Cup, apparently baffled by a rule that every child learns in the first week. That is the story as it is usually told. It is not what Ilunga said happened.

Speaking to L'Equipe, Ilunga was direct: 'I wanted a red card.' He said he knew the rules. He said he was trying to be dismissed — and that the referee, by showing only a yellow, denied him the exit he was looking for.

The reason, as Ilunga described it, was money. Zaire had opened the tournament with a 2-0 defeat to Scotland, and Ilunga said the players were satisfied with that performance. What changed the mood, he said, was the discovery that a bonus owed to the squad had been intercepted. He blamed people close to the government of President Mobutu Sese Seko — who ruled Zaire, the country now called the Democratic Republic of the Congo, from 1965 to 1997.

Ilunga's account of what followed was stark. He said presidential guards were sent to the squad with a message: if Zaire lost to Brazil by four goals or more, the players would not be permitted to return home. That is Ilunga's account, reported by ESPN and others. It is what he said. It has not been independently established as fact.

What Ilunga said he felt in that moment is on the record. 'I'm not playing anymore,' he said. 'Why would I stay on the field and take the risk of not returning home when the others — the people who took our money — are watching us peacefully from the stands?'

The yellow card meant he stayed on the pitch. The protest, aimed at his own country's authorities rather than at Brazil or the referee, went unread by almost everyone watching. The clip was filed away as slapstick.

Mwepu Ilunga was born on 22 August 1949. He died on 8 May 2015. He did not live to see the story corrected at scale, though he had told it plainly enough. The footage still circulates. The caption still calls it confusion.