SPORT: KEITH DUGGANreviews Africa United: How Football Explains Africa, By Steve Bloomfield, Canongate, 299pp, £12.99
OF ALL the dubious legacies bequeathed to Africa by the British Empire, football might be considered a genuine gift. The beautiful game exercises the same dreamy grip on the African consciousness as it does across Europe and South America. It offers the same dream of escape to a Neverland of riches and uncomplicated fame to youngsters lost in the wasteland of Mogadishu as it does to children in box rooms in Toxteth.
Africa has its football heroes past and present. Didier Drogba, the haughty and sublimely powerful centre forward of Chelsea and the Ivory Coast, has become one of the most compelling personalities in world football, adored and loathed with equal intensity. Roger Milla, the aging Cameroon star of the 1990 World Cup, created one of the immortal football images when he celebrated a goal with a joyous and unconscious dance at the corner flag which suddenly made the European manifestations of hugging and fist waving seem primal and messy in comparison. The Indomitable Lions famously went to the quarter-finals of the World Cup that year; they led England with seven minutes to go, ultimately losing on penalties. Brian Moore, ITV’s commentator for that tournament had described the African side as “a real happy go lucky bunch of fellas” during their first match. “Big” Ron Atkinson noted: “They get excitable”. The portrayal of African football – and by extension the continent itself – was little more sophisticated than that found in the old Tarzan movies starring Johnny Weissmuller. By the end of the tournament, the perceived wisdom was that sooner or later, an African country would win the world cup. Twenty years later, with the world cup about to be staged in South Africa, that has not happened.
Steve Bloomfield first went to Africa as foreign correspondent of the Independent(in London) but as an Englishman helplessly devoted to Aston Villa, he soon began to notice the patterns of football as he travelled across the continent, from the politically weighted performances of the international sides to the dust swirls caused by backstreet games. The book is comprised of 10 separate essays on individual countries with a football heritage that has somehow managed to survive, and, in rare cases, transcend the various civil wars, famines, dictatorships and genocides that have flared on the continent since the European colonial nations grandly bowed out. That football is a universal language is precisely the kind of utopian guff that FIFA will broadcast at the forthcoming world cup. But it does hold an echo of truth, as Bloomfield details here.
Early in the book, he recalls an infamous incident dating back to the 1974 world cup when Zaire (now Congo DR) played Brazil and trailed 3-0 against the masters of the world game. Brazil had a free on the edge of Zaire’s penalty area and with Rivelino loitering over the football a Zairean defender, Mpewu Ilunga, suddenly broke free from the “wall”, charged at the astonished Rivelino and thumped the ball clear. The incident confirmed the international prejudices: not only were African teams clueless as to the finer points of the game, they were cloudy about the very rules. The truth was more complicated. Lavished with cars and $100 bills by Zaire’s dictator Mobutu Seko for reaching the finals, the team found their leader’s mood had darkened after watching their series of failures. A stark ultimatum was issued: lose by four goals to Brazil and do not come home. Ilunga’s drastic action was provoked by the deepest fear that he would be exiled abroad.
Political interference – the use of the national football team as a plaything and a populist device – runs through this book. So do many haunting images – the abandoned and ruined national stadium in Mogadishu; Liberian boys in training for the amputee version of the African Cup of nations; rows and rows of empty supermarket shelves in Zimbabwe; bottles of champagne and spirits retailing for £600 in the exclusive floor in the Auto Lounge, a Lagos club where the Nigerian team like to hang out when they are in town. The contradictions of Africa – the extremes in glitter and poverty, the violence, the dramatic weather cycles and the wonderful, unbreakable optimism of so many people – lift through this book. So too do the transient hustlers and dealmakers and sometimes delusional characters that Bloomfield encounters as he learns more about African football.
But the subtitle of this book could easily have been flipped around. The inherent magic of football is its simplicity: it requires merely a football and people for a game to spark. What becomes apparent here is how Africa reflects the mass appeal of the game despite the most appalling of life circumstances. The endless tentacles of the English Premier League have already traversed the interior of Africa: not only are the names and colours of the major clubs, such as Manchester United, iconic in the most remote lands, Bloomfield was pleased and bewildered to spy the claret and blue shirt of Aston Villa as he moved through the crowds. He touches on the often violent and hopeless histories of the countries he visits but such is the sweeping nature of his subject that his explanations are brisk and revolve around the football stories.
He includes a deeply pessimistic forecast for the South African team in the world cup. But winning in sport is a luxurious concept more easily indulged in the western world. In Africa, victories are of a more fleeting and complex nature. The book closes with Bloomfield watching Eritrea beating Somalia 3-0 in a match played in the ruined City Stadium in Nairobi. Afterwards, the team celebrated with Eritrean refugees, who had fled the regime of President Isaias Afwerki (an Arsenal supporter!). A few days later, the footballers failed to board their flight home and applied for asylum. Just like that, an international team evaporated. The miracle is that year after year and through terrible adversity, African football teams keep on rising from the heat and dust.
Keith Duggan is an Irish Timesjournalist. He will be covering the world cup in South Africa for the newspaper in June
