The point of the game is simple: you are an air-traffic controller and your job is to land planes.

FORBES: Getting Your Arms Around China And Japan

He can see her reflection in the bathroom mirror, the headset wrapped around her ear as if she were an air-traffic controller or a Secret Service agent.

NEWYORKER: Brother on Sunday

For this story of semi-anonymous group heroism, he uses actual professionals (pilots, flight attendants, an air-traffic controller) mixed in with largely unknown actors, and avoids visual or verbal rhetoric.

NEWYORKER: United 93

Earlier this summer an anonymous air-traffic controller filing a report to Chirp, the industry's confidential whistle-blowing agency, claimed that pilots of low-cost airlines were cutting corners to achieve flight timetables.

ECONOMIST: The price of flying on a low-cost airline

Coached by an off-duty air-traffic controller who requested pretournament tips from, he said, his close friend Jose Mourinho, Cape Verde's team, also known as the Blue Sharks, has lighted up the Africa Cup of Nations.

WSJ: Cape Verde's Surprise Run in Africa Cup

But in 1990, a year when the islands' unemployment rate hit a high of 20%, Antunes -- who has also represented his country at basketball and table tennis -- leapt at the chance to train as an air traffic controller.

CNN: Flying high: Mourinho mentors Cape Verde's 'Special One'