If Football Became a Religion, It Would Get Martyrs Early
- Category: The Comrade
- Date 24-01-2010
- 565 views
A soccer fanatic has exaggerated that divorce should be an option if there were fundamental differences between wife and husband about soccer team preferences. He added that he would take such a drastic position if his wife celebrated when his idol team, Manchester United, suffered defeat at the hands of Arsenal’s gunners. He asserted further that soccer should be one of the critical areas to crosscheck for any young man courting a lady for marriage.
Every prospective husband, he argued, should endeavour to detect his fiancée’s favourite team from the way she talks about soccer and responds to the highs and lows of the games relayed on television. If she is excited as a rival team scores against your favourite, it may be time to think twice about your future marriage plans. You never know, she might as well express similar feelings when your rivals emerge in other fields such as business, politics, love, creed, and other social spheres.
What is strange is that the man’s basis for such strong decisions principally excludes the performance of local African teams and clubs. Many football fans do not care about Yanga or Mtibwa; Harambe or Kobs; Polisi or Chipukizi. Never!
Home-grown football does not have an appeal in Africa. Many people cannot name a single football club within their own country nor identify a couple of Africa’s national teams such as South Africa Bafana-Bafana, Nigeria’s Eagles, Angola’s Palancas Negras, Botswana’s Zebras, Tanzania’s Taifa Stars, Ethiopia’s Walyas, Senegal’s Lions of Teranga, or Egypt’s Pharaohs.
The real strife is about European and English football in particular. Most soccer fans, including kids, can name every footballer from England’s Liverpool to Spain’s Barcelona, Italy’s AC Milan to Germany’s Bayern Munich, France’s Marseille to Turkey’s Galatasaray, and so forth. It is becoming increasingly prestigious for an individual to demonstrate knowledge of European football trends and some people may soon begin to include the teams they support and pertinent goal scores in their job applications and accompanying curriculum vitae for the record.
It is okay for someone nowadays to doze during office hours and claim that they had stayed up late watching Real Madrid play New Castle. Someone in Africa can even take a day or hours off their job to watch their European favourite team play. There is a growing view that Africa is hugely populated by European souls clothed in African skins. The Africa Cup Nations has been ongoing in Angola for a while now but it is not generating equivalent euphoria among Africans as the European football does to date.
Well, today’s world is a global village and it is vitally crucial that everyone should know what happens beyond their own boarders. However, The Comrade is sickened to witness the pretence so many football fans display; staying awake for long when they cannot say exactly what they like about the matches save for the players’ names. There are a number of reasons one hears for keeping most people in Africa glued to the premiership games despite the 27th edition of the Africa Cup of Nations tournament being played on our soil in Angola.
One offensive reason is that our own national teams are not part of the tournament. Indeed there is no team from the East African region participating! This is a shame and thus not something to be proud of. Yet the noise that greets the television images of the European teams playing in their own tournaments speaks of the population that takes soccer excitedly. People are willing to lose sleep and meals if to ensure that they cannot miss a single action when their adored team confronts their rivals. And sadly, neither is an African team playing among the European ones!
Some men have fainted or committed suicide after their teams lost to rivals. Bar fights sometimes occur among rival fans watching competing teams on the same television screen simply because some player or referee blunders in some way. Soccer is increasingly becoming a religion of sorts, and some people are willing to die for it. Many Africans can die for European soccer but none for African soccer!
By Venansio Ahabwe
Source: The Comrade, The Guardian on Sunday