Africans often seek to take benefit from dire circumstances to further their game, writes JODY CLARKE
IN THE shadow of a neem tree, on a patch of sand in the isolated desert town of Am-Dam, a khaki-patterned shirt lies abandoned.
Five metres away is another set of clothes, and near that, another. In May 2009, Chad’s Union of Resistance Forces rebel army took its last stand here, before more than 200 of them died at the hands of government forces.
The bodies were buried, and their uniforms, unwanted by anyone, remain untouched. Not far away, in the centre of the sand-strewn town, lies another set of clothes. But these haven’t been abandoned.
They mark out two sets of goals. And between them, a chaotic gang of shoeless children are playing a game of football.
Am-Dam may have been the centre of a violent tug-of-war since Chad’s civil war started in 2005, leaving the ugly marks of artillery fire on the hospital, and the bullet-riddled school abandoned.
But football goes on, as it does elsewhere in Africa, despite the countless obstacles faced every day by its people.
In Somalia, where football is one of the few things to survive the country’s two-decade civil war, players have to get up before dawn for training to avoid the road blocks that spring up across the city. In Liberia, footballers have found a positive in the awful legacy of the country’s civil war through forming the best amputee football team on the continent.
That’s because whether they are in a village bar in the Tanzanian highlands or on a pitch of sand in the Chadian desert, Africans always seem to find a place to watch and play the game.
If a minibus in Nairobi doesn’t have a biblical passage scrawled across it, it’s likely to be painted in the colours of Manchester United or Liverpool FC.
Or, as Steve Bloomfield explained in a recent book, Africa United: How Football Explains Africa, North Kivu in Eastern Congo might have been a forgotten part of the world, controlled by former Rwandan Hutu militias. But when the UN helicopter he travelled in for the 2006 elections landed there by accident, there were at least 30 children wearing identical yellow Arsenal away shirts with Henry 14 on the back of them.
“It might have been a forgotten part of Congo” he writes, “so obscure that even the UN hadn’t made it there, but Thierry Henry certainly had.”
The game in Africa is still littered with problems, which too often resemble those going on in government. For example, corruption among Nigerian football officials means match results in the national league are often decided before a ball is kicked.
But they are not all of Africa’s making, as is seen in the case of players going abroad. French scouts regularly visit their former colonies in West Africa, where players are recruited from academies to join lower league sides in France. The Ivorian Didier Drogba may now be a star with Chelsea, but he started out his career with French division two side Le Mans.
But archaic immigration rules mean footballers from east Africa cannot join premiership football sides in the country of their old colonial master, Britain.
Kenya’s McDonald Mariga, for example, was scouted for Manchester City last year. But because his national team are not in the top 70 sides in the world, British immigration rules meant he could not get a work permit to join the club. He went to Inter Milan instead.
No player in football-mad east Africa has yet signed for a Premier League side, and national teams suffer as a result of the situation.
No matter how African teams perform in the World Cup, people will still kick a ball around or find somewhere to watch a game.
This year’s event in South Africa, where a record six African teams will take part, is more than just symbolic. It is a simple recognition of the continent’s devotion to the sport.