As we count down to the World Cup, the presses continue to run, churning out more and more football books. The latest are by photographer Andrew Verster Cohen and creative director Frederic Benistant, African Goal, and Soccer Chic by photographer Craig Fraser.
The pages of African Goal, with no text except for a caption guide accompanying thumbnails at the back of the book, is splattered with pictures taken in Khayelitsha and Soweto, as well as in Kenya, Ghana, Mozambique and Côte d’Ivoire.
The book, in a format slightly bigger than A4, is introduced by a pithy one-liner from Ghanaian legend and former Olympique Marseille player Abedi Pele. Pele notes how “football has not only given an often-troubled continent the odd escape from its problems, it’s made heroes and provided role models”.
A brazen statement, but in the Africa of more than a decade ago, lorded over by warlords and dictators, footballers (especially those based in Europe) were, in many ways, the continent’s sole ambassadors. Liberia and AC Milan legend George Weah, for instance, showed that the war-plagued state could return to normalcy and give something to delight the world.
Featuring images, in colour and black and white, taken in the five countries, the photographs just about show the state of the game on the continent. We see the misery of those who play in the fading light, kicking footballs so old and worn it seems a miracle that when they are hoofed up into the air they don’t just soar away. We are also witnesses to the glamour of those who have made it, the Didier Drogbas (Chelsea and Côte d’Ivoire) and the Michael Essiens (Chelsea and Ghana), idolised by young boys all over the continent.
We are also bewitched by the lurid colours, especially in the local game, the love for the grotesque and exotic, and the overwhelming sense of being part of a spectacle. Those who have been to a Soweto derby or those who watch the game on TV have seen fans donning the giant goggles and the makarapas, torsos painted in all colours, the cocky cross-dressers and fans in priestly garb.
One of the most striking images in the book is that of a donkey, obstinately standing across a goal, perhaps daring some player to try his luck. A number of the photos feature the humble pitch where it all begins.
I rather wish the book had more West Africans (Nigerians, Togolese and Malians) for, if the South African fan has a rival, he is to be found in the scorching sun and the harmattan climes of West Africa.
In Soccer Chic, which concerns itself with the South African game, photographer Fraser collaborated with graphic designer Libby Doyle. They run Quivertree, a publisher of picture books. I must say, Soccer Chic is the better book. It doesn’t try to be everything, to set itself the grand project of focusing on the African game.
The book, just smaller than the A3 format, has a short foreword setting out the social history of the game in South Africa, but it is brought alive by pithy texts from interviews with fans. Masilo Machaka, a Kaizer Chiefs fan, for instance, is recorded as saying: “I pray before and after every game; the stadium is my church.”
George Nthatisi, a Bloemfontein Celtics fan, dressed in a white overall and a necktie of his team colours, confesses: “I nearly get a heart attack when I watch Celtics play.”
By playing around with different typefaces and colours, and the extravagant use of pictures (some photographs are spread across two pages), the book has tried to be a photographic capsule of the South African football scene.
The photographs, both posed and spontaneous, make this a delectable book. Fraser’s tome shows the quirks, the faintly homoerotic cross-dressing and the way the religious dress and other norms are subverted, all sucked into the spectacle of the South African game.