You can count the legends of Malian football on the fingers of one hand, which is why the treatment of Seydou Keita this week is all the more surprising.
With the retirements of uncle Salif (the first African Footballer of the Year in 1970) and Frederic Kanoute (who's still playing club football for Seville), Momo Sissoko crocked until the end of the season, that just leaves Mahamadou Diarra and Keita still eligible to play for the Eagles.
Diarra, a defensive midfielder who once netted a crucial goal to help Real Madrid win the Spanish league but who was loaned to Monaco in January, is still in the thick of things and captains the side.
Despite occasionally representing a side many pundits are claiming to be the best ever, Barcelona's Keita, 31, failed to make coach Alain Giresse's squad this week.
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Whisper it quietly but the toppling of President Hosni Mubarak, often dubbed The Last Pharaoh, could also inadvertently end the reign of Egypt's national football team - aka the Pharaohs - as African champions.
For even though football has become understandably trivial to millions of fans and players, the revolution's timing couldn't really be worse for a country that has traditionally dominated the African game.
Next month the team, which has won the last three Africa Cup of Nations (and a record seven overall), travel to South Africa for a game where defeat would leave last year's World Cup hosts six points clear in Group G with only three qualifiers left and the North Africans with a mountain to climb.
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El Hadji Diouf is not known for his self-control, which makes you wonder - or worry - about how Rangers' new signing is going to react to his first Old Firm clash on Sunday.
With next-to-no-time to settle in following his last-minute loan deal, a man often dubbed the 'most hated man in British football' is about to be catapulted into the most acrimonious fixture on these isles.
And what a reception it promises to be, for Diouf was already persona non grata with Celtic fans after spitting at one of their number when representing Liverpool in a 2003 Uefa Cup clash.
But this constant bedfellow of controversy - his latest incident, Jamie Mackie-gate, seemingly sparking his Blackburn exit (coach Steve Kean never selected him again) - claims to thrive on adversity and, one way or another, he's unlikely to go missing.
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Born in Wimbledon, my enthusiasm for the global game was already sizeable before the tragic demise of the boys from SW19. Having covered football in over 50 countries, I've been working in the BBC's African sports section since the early noughties, recently spending three years in Africa to report on the run-up to the continent's first World Cup.
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