A STATEMENT GAME NATIONAL PRIDE ON LINE FOR ANGOLA.

Byline: SCOTT FRENCH Staff Writer

NUREMBERG, Germany - One game can't begin to repair centuries of brutal history, but the emotions Angola will carry onto the the field today against its former colonial master argue otherwise.

After 400 years of subjugation and nearly 40 years of warfare, the southern African nation finally has hope, and it has come in the form of a soccer ball.

Winning isn't Angola's chief aim in its first World Cup -- coach Luis de Oliveira Goncalves, star striker Fabrice Akwa and even President Jose Eduardo dos Santos are realists -- but the opportunity to take part in the world's biggest event and extol the virtues of its homeland are reward enough.

``All the Angolan people want to prove Angola is a good country, that it is better now and that it wants to rebuild, and they want to show this to the Portuguese people in particular,'' defender Marco Abreu, who was born in Angola but fled with his parents when civil war broke out following independence in 1975, told Reuters last week. ``In Portugal, there are a lot of people from Angola who say they don't mind if we lose all the other games, so long as we beat Portugal.''

Five of the Angolan players fled for Portugal as children; seven play for Portuguese clubs. Several others have played in Portugal, including Akwa, whose goal to beat Rwanda enabled Angola to clinch its World Cup berth.

It was the greatest sporting moment in the country's history, perhaps the best moment of any kind.

The Portuguese first arrived in 1483, and set up a colony in 1575. It was fueled by the slave trade, and until slavery was outlawed nearly 300 years later, Angola was the largest source of slaves for the Americas.

A war for independence began in 1961, and a 1974 coup that overthrew Portugal's dictatorship and established a military government led to Angola's independence a year later. Civil war soon erupted. It lasted 27 years.

Hundreds of thousands lost their homes in the conflict, nearly 1.5 million their lives. Life expectancy is 44.6 years, more than a quarter of the 14.5 million population lives below the poverty line, and one in four children die by age 5 from a preventable ailment.

Yet it is one of the world's richest countries in natural resources, with plentiful oil, diamonds and minerals. Rebuilding the infrastructure and unifying the country is crucial, and the national team has become the focal point of such efforts.

``Naturally, I'm out to win,'' Akwa told Germany's Sport-Bild magazine. ``But it's even more important to promote our beautiful country. ... Football can help heal the wounds the endless warfare has torn. It can help in an essential way to build up the new Angola.''

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Akwa, front left, and his Angolan teammates play Portugal today in Cologne.

Alexander Joe/AFP/Getty Images