Giving the Beautiful Game a “Pretty” Bad Name: A viewpoint on African Football

The Biggest tournament in Football is back, i.e., Qatar2022 FIFA World Cup. Africa is represented by Cameroon (hosts of AFCON 2021), Ghana, Senegal and Tunisia.

This leads me to reflect on this decade-old paper, which highlighted “the good, bad and ugly” side of professional football in Africa (broadly defined to incorporate both sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa).

On the good side, the contribution of African players to the European premier leagues has been reported — including the specific case of “foreign players in the English Premier League.”

On the bad side, the management of African football teams is rather appalling from the suspension handed down to the Togolese team for pulling out of the recently concluded African Nations Cup after being brutally attacked in the border town of Cabinda (Angola), by the Confederation of African Football (CAF) while FIFA looks on in silence; to the sack of the Nigerian coach and management team of the Benin side both for poor performances.

The ugly side is the current state of anarchy and the politically charged hatred between two North African giants Egypt and Algeria who have met about four times in four months amidst violence.

The question is whether this “beautiful game” is deserving of such a bad name as all eyes look towards the continent again this summer?

Originally published at https://www.researchgate.net.