Where the icy Benguela and toasty Agulhas currents collide, a rich, productive football ecosystem can emerge. This was especially true today where two stadiums, the Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium in Port Elizabeth and the Moses Mabhiba Stadium in Durban, became a swirl of football performers, supporter rituals, a celebration of survival and success for some […]
That was a duel between Zambia and Nigeria. Two equally matched opponents facing each other in the Mbombela Stadium. Each team intent on gaining that certain satisfaction. The Super Eagles wanted to cut down the Champions. The Chipolopolos needed to show they were Champions. The game had everything. A woeful penalty miss, an historic penalty […]
Referees are known to ruin games waving red cards. An early red card in the game between Ghana and Mali may have made this a classic. Instead the match competed with the empty rafters for attention. Both teams played nervous, uninspiring football. Futbologists may describe this as “Democratic Republic of Congo effect” or “Dieumerci dizziness.” […]
In the first match at the Royal Bafokeng Stadium, Rustenburg. Côte d’Ivoire 2 v 1 Togo. Don’t believe the hype about Gervinho’s late winner. It was the much maligned Boubacar Barry who won this for Les Éléphants saving two certain goals in the opening and closing seconds of this intriguing match. In between Yaya Touré […]
It is a positive that major cable networks are bothering to relay the results of the African Cup of Nations, though it is a shame their offerings remain annoyingly Eurocentric. After Alain Traoré equalized for Burkina Faso yesterday, CNN gleefully reminded the viewers at home that Traoré played his club football for Lorient in France! […]
South Africa’s Bafana Bafana were sloppy and did not take their opponents seriously. It was a woeful display. Cape Verde on the other hand were purposeful and deserved their point. The way coach Lucio Antunes cast a gimlet eye over the proceedings was impressive. He seemed to have a five bar connection to his players. […]
I want to share the story of an African Jockey, Sean Levey (in the photo above), but a blush biographical blurb about a rising star from Swaziland, particularly when his fresh face, a black face, is such a rarity in racing, would be like a cosmologist describing the universe without reference to dark matter.
In the ambient stale haze of my father’s fags, among the empties and forlorn pages of racing print stained in stout, I have found myself glancing through the debris of an afternoon’s handicapping, pausing at the almost impenetrable nomenclature and knowledge contained therein, developing a random yet fond attachment to certain horses.
David Patrick Lane writes on ‘Searching for Pancho’, a short film by South African filmmaker Christopher Bisset about the work of Pancho Guedes, perhaps the most renowned of all building designers — about five hundred structures all told — in what was then Portugal’s piece of the action, Lourenço Marques, now Maputo.
This commercial is currently saturating terrestrial British TV channels. BMW shows off new wheels on sanitized streets of Cape Town. Narrator likes to work hard, play rough. Don’t like black coffee. Brother Freddy is a model. He likes it skinny and smooth. They ghost through town without passing by black folks, without getting passed by […]
