Ghana's Black Stars shine at World Cup

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (BP)--A team that prays together plays well together, or so it seems for Ghana's national soccer team, the Black Stars, who have advanced to the World Cup quarterfinals.

Of six African nations that qualified for the World Cup, Ghana is the only one still in the tournament. The Black Stars get their name from the country's flag, which features a black star in its center amid three horizontal stripes -- red, yellow and green.

"What I've noticed, more than anything, about the Black Stars is they are a team in every sense of the word," writer Jeff Bradley noted in an article for ESPN The Magazine.

"From their pregame -- and postgame, and halftime, and pre-training and post-training -- songs and prayers, to their disciplined adherence to [coach] Rajevac's rigid system that features a single striker, they are true believers that the whole can be greater than the sum of its individual pieces," Bradley wrote.

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