Editorial: The 2010 World Cup and Africa

Africa has finally taken her place in the prestigious world of Football, known in North America as “Soccer”. The controlling body of the game has long ignored Africa in the reckoning and recognition of this popular game. Africans have been playing football since “God created Adam” but the Federation that controls the competition at the global level refused to accord Africa the right to participate in the global fiesta of the sport.

For years, Britain decided that the sport and representation at its international theatres were the exclusive preserve of only Europe and South America. Can you believe that to date the country of “Great” Britain that includes Ireland has as many as four representations to compete to the finals of the World Cup Competition? Britain is represented by England (the metropolis around London), Wales (its Eastern Province) and Scotland, its Northern Province and Ireland all competing to represent one country, Britain. When Africa was first granted “permission” to compete, the continent of 53 countries was assigned one spot, then it came to two spots and by the 2002 Competition, Africa’s representation had risen to three. In the 2006 games in Germany, the football talent in Africa was finally being ‘recognized’ by the powers that be and Africa’s representation reached five. In this year’s competition, Africa’s representation is still at five plus the host nation South Africa which entered the competition by virtue of its host status making Africa’s representation of six the highest ever in the history of the World Cup competition.

Host nation South Africa has done a good job with the preparations and infrastructures mounted to host the games. The opening ceremonies were spectacular in all respects.

However the officiating of this year’s Games have been very poor. The referees particularly have been very hostile towards the African teams and have called very questionable decisions on African teams. These have accounted in part to the rather not-so-impressive performance of the African teams so far in the competition.

As at the time of going to press, the only African team that was prodding along was Ghana. We wish the Ghanaian Team the best of luck and hope the others will be able to pull the chestnuts out of the blazing fires as well.

Whatever the outcome of this competition, we should take comfort and pride in the fact that Africa’s time in world football has finally arrived. We commend South Africa for the good job done on preparations to hold the greatest sporting event in the world.

We shall be watching and we should all keep rooting for all the African teams no matter how difficult the going gets.