Football, Davids and Goliaths
The presence of people of African origin in most of the teams guarantees that which ever team or country finally wins, it is very likely that we are going to have Pan Africanist contribution to it, writes Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem. So whatever the outcome, Pan Africanists can still celebrate. But many still wonder why African teams have not made the desired impact, and transformed individual promise and potential into success in the World Cup? Why are we so good at serving others but do not have the same enthusiasm when it comes to serving ourselves? Or framed differently: do we expend so much energy serving others that when it comes to serving ourselves we are too exhausted?
Tuesday 27 June was a very disappointing evening for many of us. The disappointment was felt not just on the street of Accra but across the continent and outside also. We were all hoping against hope that the Black Stars will fly in the face of all that experience and instinct dictated. It was a game of David and Goliath. But as in the biblical story, in football unfancied Davids have been known to literally floor many a Goliath. Just look at how many over rated country teams have been humbled in this World Cup. Both Czechoslovakia and Ghana humiliated a USA team, strangely ranked No 2 by FIFA! Maybe FIFA was rating American football, a game in which the last thing they use is their feet and they have to wear helmets!
Last Tuesday was not the Black Stars night. They performed creditably well, held their grounds in spite of being wrong-footed early in the game, fought back spiritedly but could not convert their chances against a Brazilian side that still has lingering doubts whether it is the Brazil that we all take to our hearts. However, it is not the case that Brazil was playing badly; credit must be given to Ghana for playing well.
Now that the last of Africa's hopes in the championship has been extinguished, to fight another day, the tribal character of 'the beautiful game' witnesses a dramatic change of sides by many Africans. There will be no guessing who most Africans will be rooting for now. It's Brazil all the way, failing which, many will root for Argentina. There is a historical, racialist and Third Worldist sentimentality in this transferable adulation. By point of fact, Brazil is a top dog anyday, in poor or bad shape. It is the only team for which nothing short of victory will be considered inglorious defeat. It is the only team that even when it wins (as in the current campaign) there is criticism that it is not doing so in its usual entertaining and robust style! The game may have been invented by the Scots. but the gold-standard bearers in football are not Scots (who can hardly qualify these days) or any of their European cousins. Brazil and the South Americans in general are the teams to beat. So in supporting them, Africans are simply going for the best. But it goes beyond that. Football has meant Pele, and Pele means Brazil to so many generations of Africans. Therefore, regardless of the colour (officially there are over 17 variations of blackness in Brazil), many Africans just believe them to be 'one of us'. But this racial aspect of the game is the most amusing to me. On the strengthof race, just look at most of the teams. It is no longer which team has black players, but which one does not?
Football, and sports in general, is one place where all notions of racial superiority or purity have been exposed as bogus. It is also the place where globalisation expresses its farthest reach. Players are like stocks and shares belonging to no country but the highest bidder, whether club or country! When France won the World cup in 1998 the racist bigot Jean-Marie Le Pen (leader of France's extreme right-wing Nationalist Party) and his supporters could not celebrate because they did not think that the magnificent players led by Zidane (who is still dazzling us in the current campaign) were French enough because of their ancestral origins. It was tough luck to him because the rest of France celebrated Vive la France regardless of the colour ofthe players. They did it for France. In one English League game in recent years, the current League Champions, Chelsea, managed to field a full team with reserve, without a single English man! Just look at the teams and you see Africans or players of African origin playing for all kinds of countries. This is yet another prove that when the rules are clear black people can excel. Open the doors of equality, of access and opportunity,and may the best candidate win. But we have to enter first!
The presence of people of African origin in most of the teams guarantees that which ever team or country finally wins, it is very likely that we are going to have Pan Africanist contribution to it. So whatever the outcome, Pan Africanists can still celebrate. But many still wonder why African teams have not made the desired impact, and transformed individual promise and potential into success in the World Cup?
Why are we so good at serving others but do not have the same enthusiasm when it comes to serving ourselves? Or framed differently: do we expend so much energy serving others that when it comes to serving ourselves we are too exhausted?
In this, the various teams have become metaphors for our countries. They are full of individual stars, with fantastic records at club levels in various non-African countries (mostly European but increasingly the Middle East); but when brought together, they do not perform the same wonders for their countries. There are technical, resource and organisational reasons why this is so, but I see a more fundamental reason: political and ideological orientation of both the players and those who administer sports in our countries. No matter how talented a player is, in football, you are part of a team. We are big on big players and short on team spirit. The success of Ghana so far has been because it has begun building a team, not assemble one in a permanent state of emergency like their Nigerian neighbours who were dispatched from the qualifying series by a less fancied Angola. What is the Pan-Africanist point in all these? One, individualism will not take us to the Promised Land. We need to build winning teams. Two, if Europeans can buy and sell African players, what is stopping an African country, government or entrepreneurs from investing similar resources to build a winning African team? The preparation for the next World Cup should have started four years ago, but it is not too late to begin now.
* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General-Secretary of the Pan African Movement, Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa
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