When a striker goes silent at the World Cup, fingers get pointed everywhere—coaches, tactics, confidence, the weather. But leave it to a Ghanaian spiritualist to add a supernatural angle to England captain Harry Kane’s recent drought.
Nana Kwaku Bonsam, a self-described spiritualist, had publicly vowed before Ghana’s Group L clash with England on June 23, 2026, that he would cast a spell to stop Kane from scoring. Mission accomplished—at least in the moment. Kane blanked in the goalless draw at Boston Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, squandering his best chance in stoppage time when he blazed from close range over the bar. It was a rare miss for the Bayern Munich striker, who’d tallied twice in England’s 4-2 victory over Croatia in their World Cup opener.
But here’s where it gets weird. After the match, Bonsam posted a video on social media announcing he’d decided to release Kane from the spell. “Now I am going to release Harry Kane so that, his next match, he can score. Harry, I will come and visit you. Don’t be offended. We are friends,” he said. It’s the kind of playful supernatural flex that only makes sense in the theater of international football, where superstition runs as deep as skill.
Kane, for his part, brushed off the whole ordeal with the pragmatism of a veteran striker. He acknowledged the miss wasn’t eating at him—just one of those nights when the ball doesn’t cooperate. “I’ve been a striker long enough to know they don’t always go in,” he said. Whether he credits his future success to Bonsam’s blessing or pure mechanics remains to be seen. Either way, England will take any advantage they can get as they push deeper into the tournament.
It’s a reminder that World Cup soccer exists at the intersection of raw athleticism, tactical genius, and pure spectacle—where a witch doctor’s curse can spark headlines just as easily as a hat trick.
