Some coupe decale to warm you up for the African Cup of Nations final later today between Cote d’Ivoire (the favorites) and Zambia (the team everybody is rooting for). Here, here and here are some links to previews and bold predictions on the outcome of the match. Also read our earlier post on the improbable march of Zambia to the final.
Everyone wanted to see Cote d’Ivoire play Ghana in the African Cup of Nations final on Sunday. A heavyweight clash between the two West African giants, it held the promise of a meeting of “golden” generations. The Ivorian veterans against the Ghanaian whipper-snappers, Drogba versus Ayew, Yaya Toure against Agyemang-Badu. Everyone wanted to see it. Everyone, that is, except those who have been following the progress of a Zambian side that has lit up the tournament at every stage. They might only have one player at a top European league (winning-goal specialist Emmanuel Mayuka ), but the Chipolopolo have played the best football, scored (some of) the best goals, and produced by miles the best goal celebrations at CAN 2012. Their success hasn’t been lucky or accidental. They haven’t had an easy route to the final. They have simply been brilliant.
The 28th edition of the African Cup of Nations kicks off in Gabon and Equitorial Guinea tomorrow. 16 teams–including the joint hosts who did not have to qualify–will play for 2 places in the final match scheduled on February 12. The big question is, of course, who will take the trophy.
Despite his brilliance as a footballer, a lot of people can’t take footballer Didier Drogba serious. For starters, what’s with that wet curl?
By Basia Lewandowska Cummings
It is (sort of ) a nice project. Puma Creative invited ten artists to design a new football kit that ‘celebrates Africa’s unique visual identity and culture’, with a strip for each of the partnering African national football teams: Algeria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Gabon, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Namibia, Senegal, South Africa and Togo. The launch happened this week in London and the kits look alright when they are on, and from far away.
But up close, the 10 artists stuck to the format: for Ivory Coast we’ve got an elephant with a really long trunk across the chest:
A painting sits glowering on the wall of the Jack Bell Gallery in London. Figures daubed in bright colours stare out from the canvases against a dark background broken up by bits of newspaper cuttings. This is Les Fantomes, the work of Aboudia, a 26-year-old Ivorian painter whose stark images have recently been receiving some much-deserved attention.
It’s clear that truth and reconciliation commissions are half-successful attempts at inventing half-baked feelings of national identities (turning a blind eye to economic restoration in South Africa; with some self-interested pressure from above in Rwanda). So it is interesting to note that Côte d’Ivoire’s new president Alassane Ouattara reasoned that one of the first things his country needs is a TRC. The newly-appointed commission counts 11 members, with footballer Didier Drogba one of them, representing the country’s diaspora.
“Without being a football player,” he tells BBC Sport, “I’m not sure you would be sitting here talking about my country.”
The “expensively but understatedly dressed” (qué?) player said ‘yes’ when Former Prime Minister Charles Konan Barry called and explained him he needed Drogba to help him bring peace in the country. Drogba says: “The war that happened a few months ago was crazy. It was unbelievable for all the Ivorians. We couldn’t believe it was happening and we need to sit together and speak about it to make sure it is the first and last time.”
Let’s hope Drogba is right. (Anyway, this may be the beginning of a new career back home for the aging footballer. We do know that part of his football legend is that he brought a momentary peace during the civil war of the early 2000s.)
But taking into account other recent commissions’ track records, we can only wonder why Drogba took the bait. The Ivorian TRC will succeed when it manages to expose and dismantle the grip the concept of being ‘Ivorian’/'autochtonous’ holds on the political debate, and thus on its people. It would be no small feat.
