LAINE, Minn. - One of Ghana's queens, dressed in her soccer gear, raises three fingers. She has spent the previous five minutes laughing and smiling. Not now. This is serious. Her team will play Australia Sunday at Foxboro Stadium. It's a World Cup game. The queen says her team will win. She says the team will score a lot, too.
How much?
''Three goals,'' says the queen, Vivian Mensah, with fingers raised. Before she can continue, the assistant coach sitting next to her interrupts. ''Three goals is the minimum,'' says Jones Nana Ofosuhene. ''I can't tell you what the maximum is.''
These are strange words, but not for the reasons you might think.
A soccer-playing queen from Ghana in Minnesota? Nothing unusual about that. There were several of them here as recently as yesterday, practicing at the National Sports Center. Their practice - in which they mixed phrases in English, Twi, and, unexpectedly, French - was held between a soccer stadium and a bicycle track, a place so suburban that the only consistent music is provided by birds. They concentrated with the help of head coach Emmanuel Afranie, a stern man who once studied ''football'' on both sides of the Berlin Wall. Afranie is also a proud father of eight children, a father who notes that Sunday is Father's Day, so ''The girls have promised a win as a present,'' he says.
Queens predicting victory? What queen doesn't before a battle? Not only do they have something for Australia, but Cup co-favorite China ''is not better than us,'' explains another queen, Alberta Sackey. ''We can't say they are better until they beat us on neutral ground. If that happens, we will know they are better.''
What is surprising is that these Ghanaian women from West Africa, who call themselves the Black Queens, talk so confidently even when most soccer observers give them no chance of advancing out of Group D, a group led by the Chinese. Oddsmaker Danny Sheridan has pegged them with 1,000-1 odds of winning the Cup, worst of any team in the 16-team field. (The United States is 1-1.) The Nigerians, who finished ahead of Ghana in the African Women's Soccer Championships, have 500-1 odds.
None of this bothers the Black Queens or their supporters. A Ghanaian and four-year Minneapolis resident, Richard Attoh, suggested they train here for two weeks. He assured Afranie there would be no distractions since it is 15 miles north of Minneapolis. Attoh is told about the odds.
''That's nice,'' he says. ''We appreciate it. We have no worries. In our games against China, they won both games on penalty kicks in the 90th minute. People are looking at Mensah as our best player, but we have five players who are just as good.''
Attoh has an uncle in Worcester, Mass., so he will travel here this weekend and watch the Black Queens try to win. He will be with them when they travel to Portland, Ore., for their match against the Chinese. He will be in Chicago for the match against Sweden, the June 26 match that is supposed to send the Ghanaians back to their capital, Accra.
''No way that happens,'' says Ofosuhene, the assistant coach. ''Super no way.''
They cannot go back home on June 26 or June 27 because ... because, well, have you ever seen a queen sweat? You know, the kind of sweat that comes when you push your body to its limit; the kind of sweat when you run through the hills, punishing your calves and thighs; the kind of sweat when you are on the beach, attempting to scale coconut trees?
That's why this team cannot imagine going home after three matches. Long before they kicked soccer balls in Minnesota at the beginning of this month and before their plane arrived in New England this morning, the Black Queens were preparing for this Cup. Sweating for this Cup. They started with six weeks of training, training in which they did not even see a ball.
''The No. 1 prerequisite for modern football is a conditioned body,'' Afranie says. ''In Africa, most of the players are skillful. But most of them are not physically well-conditioned.''
Afranie, who received a coaching diploma from the University of Sports and Physical Culture in Leipzig, East Germany, believes those words. He believed them so much that he told his team to run through Accra's Macarthy Hills. He then told them to run by the beautiful waterfronts and take to the trees, testing their strength.
''Ignorant people hear that part, about tree-climbing, and they might call us monkeys,'' Ofosuhene says.
But Afranie obviously doesn't care about that type of criticism. The American concept of political correctness is not in his thoughts when he says, ''Since FIFA has no different set of rules for female football, we had to condition ourselves to play like men. It is a game for those who are fit. This is not table tennis, it is a contact sport.''
No one will disagree with that. The United States and China play the game at a high level. The tournament pairings are such that the two are on course to meet each other in the final.
''To overlook Africa is a mistake,'' Afranie says. ''The good people of our country have confidence in our team. Therefore, we are not going to let down the people back home. We'll try our best to silence the forecasters, the critics.''
Maybe the critics don't know that the Queens took a trip to China before Cup play started. They went to play two exhibitions, traveling through Amsterdam and Milan before finally arriving in Beijing. Because of the significant time difference between home and China, they said they requested to push the match back a day or two so their bodies could recover. ''We traveled all night,'' says Sackey, the team's captain. ''We asked them to postpone, they didn't, and they still could only manage a 2-1 victory,'' Afranie adds.
They are asked if they have seen the United States play.
''We don't compare ourselves to teams outside our group,'' Sackey says.
If it sounds as if Queen Sackey has mastered the art of American sports discussion, she has. This is her first trip to the States, but she has quickly absorbed some of the subtleties. Asked about her impression of American life, she says, ''I can't give you a true opinion because we have only been here in Minnesota, where it is quiet. We haven't gone out much. We have been here, playing cards. After we see Portland and Chicago, then I can tell you more.''
Maybe. Team guard Rashid Amah, a pleasant man with a prominent gold tooth, hasn't had to shield the team much in the past two weeks. But, he says, there are a lot of distractions in the bigger cities. The good thing is that his people, Ghanaians, will be around. The discouraging thing is that large cities bring more options.
''It's like this one place back home,'' he says with a smile. ''They've got everything there: good guys and bad guys, great restaurants, great clubs, beautiful people, and not-so-beautiful people. All in one place.''
Nothing can get in the way of winning. Nothing. They say they are determined to take something memorable back to the approximately 18 million residents of their country.
''I am hoping that our performance in the tournament paves the way for female players in Ghana,'' Afranie says. ''I hope there is a greater interest.''
Before Afranie spoke those words, he watched the queens kick during practice. A few fans watched from a nearby hill. They heard the players chanting in what many must have thought was Twi, Ga, or English. It wasn't; it was French. They were reciting a chant the men from France used during the 1998 World Cup. It was the chant of victory. You see, the French won the Cup in '98. And if a queen is to follow anyone, that someone had better be a champion.
