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How ‘Africa United’ Won The World Cup – For France

Feature Article How Africa United Won The World Cup – For France
JUL 21, 2018 LISTEN

There’s apparently been a backlash against the notion, entertained by blacks around the world, that France’s World Cup win in Moscow on 15 July 2018, was won for her by a team called 'Africa United'?

'Africa United'?
Yes – because at least half of the members of the French squad was made up of players of African descent! Their names and countries of origin say it all: the star of the team was 19-year-old Kylian Mbappé, who is half-Cameroonian, half-Algerian. The others were Samuel Umtiti (ethnically originating from Cameroon); Steve Mandanda (Democratic Republic of Congo); Paul Pogba (Guinea); N’Golo Kante (Mali); Blaise Matuidi (Angola); Presnel Kimpembe and Steven Nzonzi (Congolese) and Corentin Tolisso (Togolese father).

Trevor Noah, the South African comic who has made it big in the US as host of the very amusing television programme, The Daily Show, retorted on his programme that the French ambassador in the US took him to task for suggesting on the programme that “Africa won the World Cup.” [for France].

US-based South African comedian Trevor Noah has defended himself after being criticised by a French diplomat for saying “Africa won the World Cup”. According to the BBC, The Daily Show host made the comments on his satirical show a day after France beat Croatia to win the World Cup.

The French ambassador to the US said the comedian was denying the players’ “Frenchness” by calling them ‘African’.

“This, even in jest, legitimises the ideology which claims whiteness as the only definition of being French,” Ambassador Gérard Araud said in a stern letter to Noah. “They were educated in France, they learned to play soccer in France, and they are French citizens. They are proud of their country, France.”

But The Daily Show host retorted that the players’ African identity should be celebrated. Noah said, “When I say ‘They are African’, I am not saying it as a way to exclude them from their Frenchness, but using it as a way to include them in my Africanness.” To deny that duality was something he “vehemently” disagreed with, Noah said.

https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=PtvABpIxlFE

This is obviously a debate that will run and run. It isn’t as bizarre, however, as the claim made by some football aficionados in my village, that Ghana ‘won’ the World Cup in Brazil in 2014! (As could be expected, they had very little to say about the way our football authorities managed to keep the World Cup money voted for the players hidden somewhere, until the players revolted and the money had to be physically flown to them whilst they were already in Brazil!)

I don’t want to go into that too much, for Sulley Muntari did everything I wanted to do to the GFA officials!) What I am interested in is how our football aficionados tend to make up the rules of football to suit their convenience, as the game goes along.

One of the more famous rules they would like FIFA to adopt is that “seven corners make one goal.” Our village team has “won” many matches by forcing referees, at the risk of being beaten up if they did not comply, to enforce that rule. It goes like this: if, during a match, one of our strikers gets near the goalmouth of our opponents, he would not try to score and probably fail in the attempt, but rather kick the ball at one of our opponents’ defenders, creating a corner-kick. If he and other strikers were able to obtain seven consecutive corners against our opponents, we would argue that the seven corners counted as one goal!

If the referee disagreed, someone would give him a sharp slap. If our opponents disagreed, they too would be set upon– by both our players and the villagers who had come to watch the game –and beaten up.

This, of course, only happened when the match was being played on our home ground. If we were playing away, and our goal-scoring methodology was disputed, we would walk off the field in anger, and drive home very fast. Very fast, because our angry opponents and their supporters might chase us, and give us a walloping unless we gave them back “their money”.

As we drove home, we would give ourselves Dutch courage by singing:

“We are we! We are we! No-one can match us! We are we!”

Another song compared us to “the speedy doves of the skies”. We could turn and twist, turning cartwheels in the air. We were dove-birds. We dominated the football field. No-one could catch us.

It was with that mentality that we concluded that Ghana should have been crowned co-world-champions with Germany in 2014. Why? Like this: if the Ghana-versus-Germany match had taken place in our village, the Ghanaian players would have walked off the pitch as soon as Ghana went ahead of Germany by two goals to one. And even if we were kicked out of the competition for doing that, we would have claimed that since we were leading Germany by two goals to one before the match was stopped, we were, morally speaking, the real World Champions.

You see, we know so many ways to stop a match that we think we are going to lose. We learnt most of these ways when we were kids. Someone would whisper to the owner of the football (there was always one spoilt rich brat who owned a proper leather football, while the rest of us made do with old tennis balls or rubber balls riddled with holes that could hardly bounce) to take his ball away.

Why? Because we had “played enough” with it. If we played with it any longer, the rubber bladder inside the leather ball would be damaged. And he was short of the material used to repair punctures.

So the result would have been what prevailed at the time the match was stopped – two-one in favour of Ghana! If we had gone off, then, we would have beaten the Germans, and become, taking the high ground, the World Cup winners! And anyone who didn’t like the idea could go and take a running jump.

I mean – could anyone name any country that was able to go ahead of Germany during the competition – apart from Ghana? Did anyone else draw two-two with Germany?

By dint of sheer logic, Ghana was better than Brazil. Because Brazil lost 1-7 to Germany, while Ghana drew with German!

Cameronduodu.com
BY CAMERON DUODU

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