The continental showpiece has overcome big odds since its start 45 years ago
Shyaka Kanuma
The Africa Cup of Nations has come a long way since the inaugural three-team tournament in Khartoum in 1957. The vision of the founder of the African Football Confederation, Ethiopian Yidnekatchew Tessema, was to create a showpiece platform for Africa’s footballing youth to display their talents for their nations’ (and individual) glory, and that would grow into the biggest sporting event on the continent.
Since that championship which saw only Egypt, Ethiopia and hosts Sudan participating, the cup has grown to a biennial 16-team soccer fest graced by some of the biggest names in world football, side by side with the astonishing rough diamonds for whom it is a springboard to undreamed-of fortunes overseas.
Tessema’s vision has largely been realised. But it hasn’t all been smooth sailing for the cup’s organisers down the years.
Barring a few exceptions, in most cases host countries’ woeful lack of facilities the venues are dangerous, and inadequate infrastructure in the form of airports, roads, hospitals, hotels and so on are the main stumbling blocks to better organised events. And only until recently has the Nations Cup begun garnering any significant sponsorship money, having floundered in the wilderness created by the disinterest of corporations for almost three decades.
On top of this is the growing reluctance of European clubs to release precious African players for national duty, a trend that is embroiling star footballers in the club-or-country controversies that mean most of them link up with team-mates only at the last minute, to the possible detriment of coaches’ plans.
Nwankwo Kanu, who should have been training with the Nigerian team in Lagos last week for this year’s event that kicks off on Saturday, instead found himself pleading with his federation to be allowed to play in Arsenal’s fixture against Liverpool.
Team-mate Lauren Etame Mayer of Cameroon claimed he had an injury that would be best treated in Britain, something that meant he could possibly play in the same premiership encounter.
Shaun Bartlett’s late link-up with Bafana wasn’t without much hand-wringing. Charlton manager, Alan Curbishley reportedly warned Bartlett that “anything could happen” while he is away.
The complications have got to the point where the idea of a new calendar planned by world governing body Fifa to co-ordinate continents has been mooted.
These are but a few of the growing pains for a tournament that has seen more than its fair share of problems, in most cases problems that are a microcosmic reflection of those that continually dog the continent’s efforts to develop; poverty and a lack of facilities in combination with general chaos, as already mentioned. The Nations Cup was for many years also under threat from enmity with in.
In 1988 at the event hosted by Morocco, the good intentions of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) were to use the tournament to promote the brotherhood of Africans. But the open racism between North African Arab players and their sub-Saharan counterparts were such that blood ended up flowing instead. At another tournament, a young Rabah Madger (coach of Algeria today), reportedly taunted Cameroonian great, Roger Milla, asking him whether his countrymen ate grass and lived in trees!
The dictators too have come in with a particularly smelly kind of interference. General Sani Abacha deprived the tournament held in South Africa in 1996 of the skills of defending champs Nigeria, by ordering a boycott. And only two years ago, General Robert Guei’s military junta in Cte d’Ivoire punished the national team for its dismal performance by subjecting the players to three days of military drill at a military base, to teach them lessons “in patriotism”!
But the nations cup is about bigger and much more positive things.
It is about the finest ideals of sport bringing together nations; the joys or frustrations that unite even the most fractious nations as citizens cheer on their countries; the realisations of the dreams, hopes and aspirations of many a young man from a deprived background.
From these shall the next George Weah, Milla, Kamal Abdel Ghani or Abedi Pele be spotted, to carry on the proud reputation African football has garnered.