Africa’s best soccer football players are West African

December 5, 2011 By 6 Comments

On January 10 next year FIFA will announce its World XI 2011. The result, they remind us, will be based on voting by over 50,000 professional soccer players from around the world. “Every voting player selects one goalkeeper, four defenders, three midfielders and three strikers.”

The 3-year-old award feels like another one of those endless FIFA awards created to showcase sponsors’ products. But I’ll take it.

The news is that FIFA just announced a shortlist of 55 players from which the final 11 players for the World XI 2011 will come from.

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Nike Chiefs

October 5, 2011 By Leave a Comment

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Golden Ball

October 27, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Didier Drogba (Ivory Coast), Samuel Eto’o (Cameroon) and Asamoah Gyan (Ghana) made this year’s shortlist for FIFA’s Ballon d’Or Award. Of course Gyan won’t win the prize. Eto’o has a better chance as he won the Serie A, Coppa Italia and Champions League treble last season as part of an incredible Inter Milan team.

Details.

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Monkey Business

October 18, 2010 By 2 Comments

By Peter Alegi, Guest Blogger
On Sunday, October 17, 2010, history was made in the Italian serie A: a match was stopped due to fans’ racist chants. It happened at the Sant’Elia stadium in Cagliari (on the island of Sardinia). Just two minutes in, referee Paolo Tagliavento had enough of the monkey chants from the Cagliari ultras directed at Inter striker Samuel Eto’o.

Tagliavento blew his whistle, explained his decision to the two captains, then ordered the fourth official to have this announcement made over the stadium’s public address system: ‘If racist chants persist, the match will be suspended.’ It was repeated twice.

After the announcement no monkey chants poisoned the atmosphere. In a delicious twist to this sad affair, Eto’o went on to score the only goal of the match and celebrated by ‘monkeying’ around.

* Reblogged from Football is Coming Home.

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On Va Samizé

June 4, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Everyone needs some coupé décalé in their life, especially on Fridays. Today it comes in the form of an ode to Samuel Eto’o (la fierté de l’Afrique!) from Cameroonian DJs Polio and Kitoko. It also seems like a great way to start the final countdown until kick-off in a week.

Enjoy.

h/t ChiefBoima

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Represent

May 3, 2010 By 3 Comments

If the choice of which team to root for in May 22nd’s  European Champions League final was based on how many African players they fielded, then apparently you should root for Inter Milan.

Milan has three players on its roster:Samuel Eto’o, Sulley Muntari and McDonald Mariga. That’s of course if Muntari and Mariga get to play. 

In contrast, Bayern Munich has zero African players in its team, argues Piers Edwards in his football blog on the BBC’s site.   Oh, and Milan manager, Jose Mourinho, has a history of trusting African players (even if he inherited them from a previous manager) in key positions–think Didier Drogba, Michael Essien and John Mikel Obi. And Mourinho wife was born in Angola. That’s not how I pick a team to root for, but thanks for telling me.

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Vanity Fair’s World Cup Cover Story

May 3, 2010 By 1 Comment

Blog post on the magazine’s June cover story (written predictably by a Brit) including the Annie Leibovitz cover photograph for which some of the world’s recognizable players wore nothing else but their underwear.

Via Austin Merril

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Puma does the World Cup

April 16, 2010 By Leave a Comment

The best of the pre-World Cup commercials that I have seen thus far. It’s unashamedly about football. If you go out and buy some Puma kit, I won’t blame you. (BTW, Puma has a great site chronicling the preparations, mainly on the field, for the 2010 World Cup.) Interestingly, since Puma sponsors the other five African teams that qualified for the World Cup, South African football hardly feature.  But isn’t this Africa’s World Cup after all?

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The Special One

March 31, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Cameroon’s football captain Samuel Eto’o scores for his club Internazionale Milano against Livorno in Italy’s Serie A.

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Africans Prefer English Soccer

February 2, 2010 By Leave a Comment

These scenes of Angolan football fans at the recent African Nations Cup captured by Al Jazeera may give the impression that Africans still value the continental game.

Actually they prefer English football, argues sports writer Simon Kuper in a recent Financial Times column.

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