The Myth of the Africa Cup of Nations

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.