Brazil 2014 and Africa’s fruits of questions

Little tributaries have players from parts of Africa inside ambition-shops in Tunisia, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa. The flow to Europe has drawn complaints that players from Africa and Asia are paid lower incomes than Caucasian players native to Europe. This inflow of talent into Europe has fed pitches where football matches are played with […]

Little tributaries have players from parts of Africa inside ambition-shops in Tunisia, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa. The flow to Europe has drawn complaints that players from Africa and Asia are paid lower incomes than Caucasian players native to Europe. This inflow of talent into Europe has fed pitches where football matches are played with crowds roaring choruses of worship more deafening than those of devotees in Europe’s empty churches.
Football worship chan-nels low class anxieties away from political protests even though its manifestation as racism remains troublesome. Incomes of talent exports from Africa and South America join rivers of remittances of hard currency to families at home. The flow is, however, hurting nationalism -the fuel that burns at the centre of FIFA’s most prized four-yearly festival: the World Cup.
SOUTH AFRICA 2010 and BRAZIL 2014 have dramatized the orphaning of nationalism in the genius-importing countries, namely: England, Spain, Portugal and Italy. While in 2010 Spain thrilled its football fans inside football stadia and those at home all the way to the winning kick, fans of England and Italy had gnashed their teeth early with defeats and exits of their national teams from South Africa. In BRAZIL 2104, a humiliating haul has had England, Italy, Spain and Portugal ruining summer holidays of their people’s nationalist sensibilities.
In Africa, countries with the largest exports of footballers to Europe, namely: Cameroun, Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana were felled in the ‘’group stage’’. Nigeria and Algeria survived to the honourable Group of 16 but Nigeria’s players joined those of Cameroun and Ghana in denigrating their countries’ nationalism with vulgar demands for huge sums of money –high by the standard of wages at home – often both before and during the tournament. They have joined politicians in contaminating youths with mocking values of self-sacrifice in building a nation. A Nigerian footballer who sells his labour in Vietnam told me of being betrayed by Nigerian football bureaucrats when he broke his leg while playing in the Under-20 national team. His family scrambled to pay for lower quality health care; and his leg became deformed. With the cost of being excluded from the team being higher than the merit of struggling to arousing national condemnation of cynical corruption by football officials, players turn to seeking insurance by  ‘’work-to-rule’’  protests.
Exported labour broadcast on television for generating income through advertisements for European clubs has the merit of pooling talent into a universal product. Yet in serving as a common dish to viewers worldwide, FIFA’s four-year ritual has lost that special treat it previously served to fans as Brazil brought brilliant performances as a secret of geography. Niyema of Brazil and Messi from Argentina arrived into BRAZIL 2014 without the novelty that Pele, Zico, Socrates, Tostao or Maradona gave the world of football during earlier World Cup tournaments. Toure of Cote d’Ivoire, Ronaldo of Portugal, Rooney of England arrived as jaded products on a complex drama.
The tournament always puts Africa’s deep historical scar on stage. In BRAZIL 2014 teams from Brazil, Honduras, Columbia, Ecuador, Costa Rica, even Argentina (whose 45 per cent black population was deliberately depleted) showed African viewers their long hidden relatives. FIFA and the African Union owe Africans a tournament of historical reunion in which teams from diasporas contend. China, Britain, Ireland, Italy and India would join Africa in pushing for this ritual of harvesting often less visible flowers of history.
The early exit of Cameroun, Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire with Eto, Drogba, Toure, Ayew, Boateng all playing in top European teams, raises troubling questions. Pele once said that when Nigeria’s youth teams play in global tournaments, youths from Europe only see their departing heels. However, after Europe’s coaches squash the flares in them and they become predictable; more dependent on muscle-power. It also questions award of ‘’African Footballer of the Year’’ crown to exported players. Toure, Eto and Drogba have won the prize and yet consistently failed their countries at the World Cup. They lack that music in Roger Mila’s 1990 team; the rhythm in Super Eagles at ATLANTA 1994. African football talents trained with skills with Africa’s diverse traditional dances must inform the award.
FIFA must join African governments in obtaining significant portions of profits hauled out of Africa by corporations mining copper, oil, gas, gold, diamond, platinum, tantalum and other natural resources. A  RESOURCE TAX must be paid to clubs where resources are located. The use of such funds to pay salaries that compete with those paid by European clubs would support talented coaches and players and slow down the haemorrhage of talented players.
The current regime of the game rewards GOALS at the expense of CREATIVITY, flare and a team’s capacity for uplifting the public’s appreciation of human genius. In KOREA/JAPAN 2002, the flare of Senegal’s ‘Teranga Lions’ fell to a frigid Turkey team very much against the rhythm of the game. In BRAZIL 2014 Ghana completely out-flared the American team but lost to a crude header from a corner kick at the dying minutes of the game. The reliance on the arithmetic of goals saves FIFA from the urgent challenge of evolving tools for mapping performance which measure a complex ritual.