Scenes from inside the four-year-old Alassane Ouattara stadium near Abidjan in Ivory Coast, last Saturday night: fans wearing replica shirts hosted sessions on Facebook Live or worked on their Instagram posts; others danced themselves dizzy to the irritatingly catchy 2023 African Cup of Nations song, Akwaba (”Welcome” in Baule); midway through the game we switched on our mobile phone torches and waved them — tens of thousands of gentle lights swaying in unison.
Attending the Afcon has been on my bucket list for years. But here I felt I could have been watching Ivory Coast taking on Guinea Bissau in any European stadium. It was only outside the stadium, in the neighbourhoods south of Ebimpé where I had to negotiate driving through large ecstatic crowds celebrating and dancing on the main highways and holding up traffic, that I felt I was finally somewhere else. Finally in Africa.
There is a sense of adventure in visiting a sub-Saharan football tournament. This is part of the football subculture of escapism that starts with trips to the San Siro and Camp Nou, or a subscription to the bible for globetrotting ground-hoppers, Football Weekends.
Like many fans of my age, my first encounter with African football came with the 1974 World Cup’s Leopards of Zaire. Who can forget Ilunga Mwepu breaking free from his wall at a Brazilian free-kick to boot the ball downfield, in what transpired was a protest against the country’s president, Joseph-Désiré Mobuto. Further winds of change for African football came with the unbeaten Cameroon team in 1982. Eight years later they would defeat Diego Maradona’s Argentina in the 1990 World Cup opener and come within seven minutes from dumping England out of the competition.
In the 1990s I came across French-based magazine African Football on sale in London. Its Afcon ‘92 special contained an amusing photograph of a smiling man wearing an outrageously colourful printed shirt, with a photograph of elderly men emblazoned on it. Waving what looked suspiciously like an Irish Tricolour, he was surrounded by others wearing the same shirt or a green, white or orange pith hat. Was this a football match or political rally? I remain clueless, but the country with the inverted Irish flag was Ivory Coast.
In Africa is Not a Country, Dipo Faloyin writes that the Cup of Nations is “more than just a football competition”. Outrageous tales of faked ages and “at least two investigations into goalkeepers attempting to use juju at half-time” add to its uniqueness as the only continental competition held biennially. Faloyin observes the “wounds from previous tournaments never have time to heal, and the promise of revenge is palpable”.
Everybody knows African football is noted for its colour, from Zaire’s 1974 shirt to scenes of fans painted top to toe in national colours. Ivory Coast’s shirt is an enchanting light orange, like a tropical Aperol Spritz. The country itself pops with colour, lush emerald countryside lying on rich rust colour soil that becomes more prominent the further north you travel. Coupled with thousands of flags that look almost identical to the Irish Tricolour, it becomes as intoxicating and disorientating for an Irish man as a night enjoying those Aperol Spritzs.
You quickly realise the importance of the flag here. I was scolded by one fan in the stadium for holding my Tricolour the wrong way round during the Ghana v Cape Verde game. When he realised I was Irish, he quickly apologised and smilingly demanded a photograph of us with my flag at half-time. He asked a friend to take the photograph, who immediately complained that my flag was the wrong way round.
Superstition is also prevalent here. About 30 minutes into the Afcon 2023 opener — the tournament postponed for six months due to climate concerns — an owl started circling above the end near where I was sitting. Fans became agitated, swatting the bird from afar and throwing items in the air. The Ivorian beside me, Juvenal (30) from Abidjan but now living in France, explained that its appearance signified bad luck. The owl eventually departed but not before Seko Fofana of Ivory Coast saw his shot tipped on to the post. Bad luck indeed.
Earlier in the day I had met Attai at my hotel, a tall jovial Nigerian 41-year-old. He is head of marketing in Burkina Faso for Tecno, the Chinese mobile company and Afcon sponsor, and was here with a group of friends. He spoke of how the tournament unifies the continent. “If you hear stories about Africa it is about terrorism, or a government is going down. This competition in contrast brings together different parts of Africa, sticking with one voice, just sharing football and making new friends.”
It was a sentiment echoed by Juvenal: “Football is important around the world for all countries. Even for me living in France, or if I lived in Ireland. Everyone loves their nation. It is all about sharing love, friendship and patriotism.”
On the Sunday I attended the Group B double-header that evening of Egypt taking on Mozambique and Ghana against Cape Verde. Unlike the previous night, this had a sizeable non-African attendance. I bumped into Jörg, a 54-year-old civil servant with a German flag and an SV Darmstadt 98 shirt, with his son. He confessed to having a long-time love of the competition. “My son and I were watching the Afcon for many years and when he was eight or nine years old, I told him when he was old enough we’ll go there one day.”
Having attended previous tournaments, Attai was impressed by the organisation of the opening game, especially the huge police presence that secured the stadium from large groups of ticketless fans getting anywhere near the ground. This was more than mere revenue protection — at the previous tournament in Cameroon, eight people died following a stampede when a locked gate into the stadium for a game between the hosts and Comoros was suddenly opened.
However, there were also too many empty seats at this supposedly sold-out match, with 36,858 counted in a stadium that holds 60,000. Other matches have also been hugely under-attended. The prices for visitors from Europe have been extremely cheap: a Category One ticket for the Group B double-header cost €15, while tickets have been as low as a tenth of that for Category C. Still in a country where the daily minimum wage is €6, this remains prohibitive to many.
Another difference I noticed to the European Championships I’ve attended was the lack of official merchandise. On the way to Ebimpé, local Ivorians halted traffic selling flags, hats, and replica shirts. This was in contrast to the dearth of such goods at the stadium. Attai suggested that while in Europe such branding is successfully protected, this is harder in Africa, leading to the organiser’s disinterest in selling such goods.
For me, the game that excited me most was Ghana versus Cape Verde: or Chris Hughton v Roberto Lopes. It was hard not to feel sorry for the former Irish international as his side fell to a shock 3-2 defeat, but the highlight of the tournament for me came when Garry Rodrigues looked to be leading his team-mates out of the stadium after scoring the injury-time winner.
Afterwards I met Eddie, who runs a football academy in Accra. He was far more scathing of the players than of Hughton, adding Ghana, a major African nation, have not increased their tally of four titles since 1982: “I was just nine when we last won it,” Eddie sighed.
For those interested, the next Afcon in Morocco in 18 months will be more attractive to many to attend: Yellow Fever jabs, Malaria pills and mosquito repellents will be unnecessary. For me, I already have an eye on attending the 2027 competition, to be hosted by Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. And if I cannot wait until then, the trio are hosting the African Nations Championship — Confederation of African Football tournament for African-based players — this September as a dress rehearsal for the tournament.
Afcon has been a marvellous experience, with Mark Twain’s statement about travel still ringing true: it is “fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness.”
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