You, like me, are
probably looking forward to a top notch international football
championship. You, like me, are
probably eagerly anticipating excellent football, lively atmospheres and
wall-to-wall television coverage.
Alas, I speak of Euro 2012, coming in June, not of the Africa Cup of
Nations, which begins on Saturday when Equatorial Guinea take on Libya, live on
British EuroSport.
I say Equatorial
Guinea. What I actually mean is a
bunch of mercenaries masquerading as a national football team for which many
have only the most spurious claim to be entitled to play. The Confederation of African Football
(CAF) have for years turned a blind eye to eligibility issues. Perhaps we should hope that Equatorial
Guinea do well, leading to protests from opponents which may finally force CAF
to act.
The Equatoguineans,
such as they are, are only in the tournament because the tournament is in
Equatorial Guinea, who co-host with Gabon. At least Gabon have a halfway competent side.
Equatorial Guinea
should have no business hosting the championship. Though the richest country in continental Africa, its wealth
is distributed with grotesque iniquity; 70% of the population live under the UN
Poverty Threshold of $2 per day.
It is also listed by Freedom House as having one of the worst national
human rights records in the world.
Usually around this
time, the BBC wheel out a pundit – often Mark Bright – to talk about the
‘colour and vibrancy’ of the tournament.
Codswallop. If you want
colour and atmosphere at an international tournament, get hold of a DVD of the
Holland-Italy match in Bern at Euro 2008.
If you want matches played in mostly empty stadia unless the home team
are playing, with irritating bands playing continuously regardless of what
happens on the pitch – they don’t even stop for a goal – and barely interested
fans wandering idly into the stadium twenty minutes after kick-off, watch the
Cup of Nations.
It is often little
better on the pitch. Some
tournaments at least make up with drama what they lack in quality: the 2008
tournament in Ghana averaged well over three goals per match; the 2010 semi
final between Egypt and Algeria was unforgettable, albeit for mostly the wrong
reasons.
But generally it is
thin gruel. The last three Finals,
and four of the last five, have been dismal. The first tournament I followed in depth, in Mali in 2002,
was wretched: barely 1.5 goals per game; atrocious pitches, often dangerously
so; and lamentable football by most teams.
In Angola two years
ago, the tournament started with a bang and the best match of 2010. In the 74th minute, a Manucho penalty
put the hosts 4-0 up over Mali in a delirious Estádio 11 de Novembro in Luanda. A Seydou Keita goal seemed to be only a
consolation but Mali scored again in the 88th minute, then in the 93rd and
finally equalized in the 94th. It
was surely the most extraordinary opening match to any major international
football tournament in history.
That, though, was a
false dawn. Take Jonathan Wilson’s
word for it: “The football in Angola two years ago was rubbish.” Overshadowed by the terrorist on the
Togo team bus – evidence that this was yet another tournament misguidedly taken
to an inappropriate country – the football did little to warm the blood. Algeria and the hosts almost certainly
conspired to draw 0-0 in their final group fixture, thus guaranteeing progress
for both at the expense of the more adventurous but utterly incohesive Malians.
The refereeing was
weak and conspired to help cynical teams.
The attendances for matches
not involving Angola were pitiful, yet our intelligence was insulted by
preposterously inflated ‘official’ crowd figures which bring to mind a Carling
Cup tie at the Emirates Stadium.
But this is a
tournament which comes with complimentary codswallop by the bucket load. Wilson also wrote, in a recent Guardian
article, of the editor of another organ rejecting a column for being ‘too
negative’ about the tournament.
The appeal of the
tournament remains that it is a fascination. But it was a fascination twenty years ago; that is not
progress. Yet the tournament is
bizarrely covered much more by the BBC than the significantly superior Copa
América or even the Asian Cup, and that is even after they have lost the rights
to ITV.
Africa has been
overtaken by Asia as the continent most likely to be the third, after South
America and Europe, to produce a World Cup winning nation, or even Finalist. Japan, or even South Korea, would
probably walk this tournament.
That is its greatest condemnation.
