Angola

Angolan football speaks Portuguese with an accent of its own: it was born in the colonial branches of Lisbon and Porto's giants, and from one of them, Sporting de Luanda, came Fernando Peyroteo, to this day the greatest scorer in the history of the Portuguese league. Independence brought the Girabola, in 1979, dominated by Petro de Luanda and 1.º de Agosto, the clubs of the oil company and the army. The Palancas Negras peaked in 2006, with their only World Cup appearance, falling with honour to Scolari's Portugal, and in 2010 the country hosted the Cup of Nations, opened by an unbelievable 4-4 between Angola and Mali in Luanda. And there is Cabinda, the oil enclave, where even the local Sporting ended up renamed by the company that pays for its shirts.