Soccer brings out the pagan in me. Most Sundays there are five or six hours of quality games to watch and today was no different. I watched TV5's broadcast in French of the Nigerian victory over Cameroon in the African Cup of Nations. [There ought to be a TV channel of just soccer from the equatorial world all day all winter.] The game was close and featured lots of players playing in the well covered English Premier Division such as Arsenals' Kanu and Bolton's Jay Jay Okocha for Nigeria. The Cameroonian goalie was a bit reckless - twice finding himself within a foot of the corner flag - and in the end I think that he was the difference.
Again, a snazzy new Cameroon outfit will be banned by FIFA. A former sleeveless version of the loverly green, red and yellow met a similar fate in the last World Cup. This from the brain trust that came out with the principle that women should wear tighter shorts when playing. You would think at the level of international sport, folks like FIFA president (the onomatopoeically named) Sepp Blatter would worry more about the real problems and less about fashion.
In the February issue of When Saturday Comes there is a great article on Rwanda's participation in the Cup championship which includes the following:
If we are to believe FIFA president Sepp Blatter's assertion that "the philosophy of football is to offer hope", then it goes without saying that some nations are more in need of football than others...The sheer scale and brutality of the Rwandan genocide a decade ago - when the incumbent Hutu government ordered the massacre of the minority Tutsis - had appeared to spell the extinction of Rwanda as a nation state made up of two ethnic groups. Yet, on Jnauary 24, a football team comprising player from both communities will play the opening match of the African Cup of Nations against the hosts Tunisia, who are led by former France coach Roger Lemerre. In July last year, Rwanda had caused the biggest upset in the qualifying by defeating Ghana 1-0 in Kigali to reach their first international finals.
