The World Cup has always been a paradox of sorts. While it is supposed to be about the celebration of cross-cultural talent and the collective ability of nations, it always debunks the widely held myth that our players possess peculiar natural skills only found in Africa.
While a fair number of African players grace the fields of Europe, the black continent’s performances over the years in this prestigious tournament have been dismal.
The World Cup is a hopeless expedition of expectation that Africa undertakes every four years. Although we are always capable of springing the odd surprise, no one seriously believes that an African nation can win the cup. Cameroon in 1990 and Senegal in 2002 reached the quarterfinals – but none has gone further.
African supporters find solace by creating real or imagined links to anything similar either to our cultural values or our looks – our posture, our skin colour, kinky and short hair, thick lips and nose shapes.
Because most of our teams are knocked out at the group stages, we collectively group behind whichever nation carries the continent’s hopes the furthest, be it Cameroon, Senegal or, this year, perhaps Côte d’Ivoire. When that fails, Brazil will always be a prodigal son of Africa.
When the South Americans lift the cup we celebrate their triumph, although, in reality, they are at best distant cousins.
At least we can gloat about Pele. Until the day Africa comes of age and one of our countries beats Brazil in a World Cup final, the colour of the skin of the man regarded as the best to ever kick a football will always matter to us.
Remember how we claimed Zinedine Zidane in 1998? After all, he was born in Algeria, it was said. We spoke about the number of players of African origin in that victorious French team, forgetting that they had won the cup for a non-African country and they were proud to be associated with their adopted nation.
We resort to vicariously bragging about these individuals because that is as close as we can get to winning the World Cup.
In this year’s tournament Ghana’s Stephen Appiah and Michael Essien, Côte d’Ivoire’s Didier Drogba and his highly rated countryman Arouna Kone will remind the world that, despite our inability to sup at the top table, Africa still produces diamonds.
There is a plethora of reasons for Africa’s failures, varying from ongoing conflicts, to corruption and competition for funding. How can you give money to sport when there is endless poverty? What comes first, attention to rising levels of infant mortality, or training facilities? Can governments ignore pandemic diseases and give preference to soccer?
But although there is little chance that one of Africa’s five representatives will win in Germany this year, we can take some heart from the prospects for 2010. For the hosts traditionally do well at the World Cup, and that luck spreads across a continent. Brazil, for example, have never won the title in Europe.
And, if we cannot beat them and we fail to impress them with our organisation, we should take heart in the fact that by the time the world’s soccer community is be ready to go back home they will have protruding bellies because we will have fed them with ubuntu at least.