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Africa soccer

Read of the Day: Africa, Written by the Victors

Did most of Africa crash out of the World Cup (as The New York Times‘ Roger Cohen argues) because its teams relied on post-colonialesque “big men” like Eto’o and Drogba, not the starless teamwork exemplified by Ghana and Germany (who happen to be lacking Michael Ballack, their own big man)? Or is the multicultural German squad a final victory over Hitler’s vision? Isn’t it just like the elite Western press to use developing world histories to define and condemn while not recognizing their complicity in those tragedies? (Treasons, Stratagems & Spoils)

(Image credit: oka_bol/Flickr through a Creative Commons license.)

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Africa: Every Man for Himself

Africa is no closer to producing a World Cup winner than it was 20 years ago, when Cameroon’s quarterfinal appearance raised everyone’s expectations to utopian. Political interference, corruption, a lack of coaching infrastructure, a culture of give-me-mine, and the dominance of academies (which develop athleticism at the expense of creativeness) are to blame. “African football is not progressing, but more worrying is that it is not even progressing toward progress.” (Jonathan Wilson/Sports Illustrated)

Soccer Players: Africa’s New Extractive Industry

Africa has a new natural resource it’s exporting — thousands of young soccer players, recruited to the continent’s exploding number of academies, the best of whom are shopped around by agents or funneled to European clubs that work around the E.U.’s human trafficking laws. The rest are discarded, either at home on on Europe’s streets. Indigenous NGOs fight the trade, but demand grows daily — and the exposure the World Cup brings the continent will only make things worse. (Christoph Biermann and Maik Grossekathofer/Spiegel Online; HT: The Goal Post.)

Why It’s OK to Say ‘This is Africa’s World Cup’

All of Africa is acting as if it’s co-hosting the World Cup — and justifiably so. The “othering” of Africa by Europeans has been co-opted by many Africans to become continental identification and pride. And the sport has a “transcendent role in daily life” from Accra to Nairobi. A Mauritanian feeling ownership of an event hosted thousands of kilometers away isn’t false consciousness — it’s a model for the rest of us. (Miriti Murungi/Nutmeg Radio)

Why Women in Africa Do(n’t) Play Football

Norms of beauty. Malnutrition. A preference for basketball. A lack of tampons. The things that prevent women from playing football in Africa are so legion, it’s a wonder they ever play the game. And yet they do… (Andrew Guest/Pitch Invasion)

Beyond the Vuvuzela

Beyond the Vuvuzela: Two new academic books on Africa soccer make at least this clear: that World Cup 2010 is much more than either (a) FIFA’s Disneyfied dream of a smiling, frictionless continent, or (b) South Africa as mere set design for a multinational capitalist circle jerk. (Andrew Guest/Pitch Invasion)

Unconscious Racism and West African Midfielders

It’s a self-perpetuating myth: The big European leagues prefer their West African players big and physical — doing “the unglamorous, slavish dirty work.” But does that “preference” also inform the self-conception of African players and teams?