Papa President
The fifth in my series of short summaries about the culture and politics of football.
• Last week I visited Cape Town, South Africa. (Classes had ended at The New School, so I used the opportunity to check in on my 81 year old father. The official reason for the trip was that I had been appointed an “extraordinary professor” — an exalted name for a honorary or visiting professor — of journalism at Stellenbosch University, so went to give a talk there.) The visit was dominated by family matters, so I did not see many people (this is a public apology), but I did pay attention to football. The local Premier Soccer League was winding down. Mamelodi Sundowns are the champions; its 6th title in a row. Orlando Pirates (my club) finished second. The top two teams qualify for the African Champions League. Third-placed Supersport United qualified for the African Confederations Cup (the equivalent of the Europa League). Side note: Sundowns, which history includes fraud (I’ve written about it) is owned by the Motsepe family (the father is now president of CAF, the controlling body for African football); Orlando Pirates is one of South Africa’s oldest football clubs (Nelson Mandela and Chris Hani were supporters); while SuperSport was started by a local satellite television company that, incidentally, monopolizes football coverage (of both domestic and foreign football) in South Africa and large parts of the continent. I don’t have the bandwidth here to go into the problems of South African football which is plagued by empty stadiums, a few teams dominate (smaller teams have long accused the league of favoring the bigger clubs), allegations of match fixing have followed the professional leagues, and relegated clubs often buy franchise rights to retain their status at the top of the game. As a result, there is very little tradition and fans can’t develop loyalty. That said, locals have more important things than football to worry about: The country is definitely experiencing a deep depression over a range of crises: “load shedding” (electricity blackouts), high unemployment, a recession, and uninspiring and mostly reactionary political leaders and parties. Which is why football fans there may have missed that two of the most exciting and tactically astute coaches on the continent right now are both South African: Pitso Mosimane and Rulani Mokwena. I’ve written about or linked to articles about Pitso already a few times. Mokwena is less well known. He is coach of Sundowns. He has an interesting biography: His grandfather was Eric Sono, a legend at Orlando Pirates and his uncle, Jomo, played with Pele and Franz Beckenbauer at New York Cosmos. Mokwena is the subject of a short profile (and interview) with Maher Mehazi at Al Jazeera English. Mehazi also posted the full transcript of the interview on Twitter. The piece is mostly about his growing reputation as a football tactician. It was conducted before Sundowns lost to Wydad Athletic Club in the semifinals of the Champions League, a title Mokwena won in 2016 with Sundowns as an assistant to Mosimane. The question of coaching in Europe also comes up. As Mehazi notes: “No African international coach has coached in one of Europe’s top five leagues.”
• Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang divides opinion. Mikael Arteta saw him as an obstacle to Arsenal FC making a serious title run. Based on Arsenal’s progress this past season in the English Premier League and Aubameyang’s form at Chelsea FC it may seem that Arteta was right. But Arteta also has a reputation (like his mentor Pep Guardiola of not liking players who talk back), so it may not be all Aubameyang’s fault. Aubameyang was a 2022/2023 champion in Spain with FC Barcelona (he had a brief loan spell there; he played one match). Aubameyang likes to show off his cars and clothes all the time. But the thing that really rankles me about him is his proximity to and open support of Gabon’s dictator, Ali Bongo. Aubameyang likes to make a meal out of his decision or not to play for his national team and last week he posted an Instagram image of him, Aubameyang’s dad Pierre (a former footballer also close to the ruling family), and a frail Ali Bongo. The meeting was about convining Aubameyang to play for the national team again. The picture was accompanied by a fawning caption about it being an “immense honor” to “listen to the wise words” of Bongo like “a father speaking to his son.” It is all quite embarrassing. A while back, Africa Is a Country ran a post by Uri Levy about the national team’s association with the Bongo dictatorship and fans’ disdain for Aubameyang. (His teammates, Didier Ovono, who plays in the French second division, and Mario Lemina of Wolves in the EPL, apparently side with Gabon’s political opposition and these clashes spill over into the dressing room when the national team meet.)
• Related: Aubamyang’s slavish devotion to authoritarianism contrasts with that of the English players, Gary Lineker or Marcus Rashford. Both appear on The New Statesman’s “Left Power List.” There’s a lot to criticize about that list. For one, it is false advertising because it is really about who will influence the Labour Party if and should they return to power and many on there are liberals or center right at least. Nevertheless, the inclusion of Lineker (high up at number five) and Rashford is interesting. Lineker, who owns a podcast platform, and briefly brought TV football analysis in the UK to a standstill over political interference by the BBC (controlled by Conservative Party political appointees), has become “a free-speech martyr and a rare voice supporting the cause of asylum seekers and refugees.” Rashford, who “succeeded in forcing the (UK) government to extend free school meals across the holiday period during lockdown,” comes in at number 42. Lineker is 62 years old, but Rashford only 25. The New Statesman also notes about Rashford: “polling once suggested the public saw him as a better alternative PM than Keir Starmer.”
• In my running commentary on black or African-descended coaches in Europe’s top leagues: Antoine Kombouaré has been fired as coach of Nantes after two years. Nantes has been relegated from Ligue 1. Kombouaré’s biggest achievement at Nantes was coaching them to the Coupe de France in 2022 and as runners up this year. He is originally from Neo Caledonia in the Pacific and came to France at 18, played at Nantes (his first club in France) and PSG (where he scored a famous goal against Real Madrid). He was PSG coach before the Qatar money arrived. Neo Caledonia is still a French colony and Kombouaré is a Kanak nationalist. But his anticolonial politics live along some other reactionary stances Kombouaré is a controversial figure and hard to like, so it is not sure whether many black French football fans or players will sympathize with him. Among others, he has stood by PSG coach Christophe Galtier who has been accused of racism and he dropped Muslim players who fasted during Ramadan.
• In the early 2000s, French footballers mimicked rap stars. Now they copy tech billionaires, argues Cedric Landu, a communications expert, in Le Monde, and are more ambitious in their visions — articulated as values — for society. Kylian Mbappe is exhibit 1,000,0003. “… For [Silicon Valley leaders], society is an ecosystem and they must become its center of gravity. Their economic vision is therefore accompanied by a societal ambition and an inspiring narrative. This erases the concrete (the manufacture and sale of transitional objects) to better exalt the vision (change the world)… It is therefore not surprising that Silicon Valley entrepreneurs have been the most audible during the latest societal upheavals.” In 2021, Mbappe gave an interview to a French magazine where he announced his idea of “New France”: “‘For me, to say that one is black, Arab, white, is to put up a barrier, and in the new France, there is no no barriers, we're all together’ – and took on his responsibilities – ‘A great sportsman must be committed and today I'm ready’.”
• The Nigerian billionaire, Aliko Dangote, one of the richest people in Africa, wants to buy the French second division team Valenciennes. In its glory days Roger Milla, Jean-Pierre Papin and Jorge Buruchaga, among others, played their football there. Dangote has been linked with buying Arsenal FC before. Though he never made a serious bid for Arsenal, he often played along with the media speculation about it. If Dangote is successful in buying Valenciennes, it will make him the second Nigerian to own a European club. The other is Shola Akinlade, who owns a Danish club. Owning a football is not a way to make money, though we know it is more a form of power, prestige and branding.
• I missed this story about the Republic of Congo (Congo-Brazzaville) men’s national team players having to write a letter to their federation over match bonuses.
• In 2018, Yaya Toure’s then-Russian agent clashed with Toure’s then-manager, Pep Guardiola. Dimitri Seluk claimed he summoned African traditional healers to put a curse on Guardiola and Manchester City to never win the UEFA Champions League together. Earlier this month, before the first leg of City’s semifinal against Real Madrid, Seluk, on his birthday, announced that he had asked for the curse to be lifted. As for Toure, he took to Twitter:
My former agent is being quoted by the media about a “curse.” Please don’t associate me with this nonsense and lazy stereotypes about African curses!? Media … move on please. This man does not represent me in any way. Amplifying these stereotypes is harmful.
• At least thirteen of Ecuador’s 21-man Under 20 World Cup squad is of African descent. African-descended players are overrepresented in the men’s senior national team. Afro-Ecuadorians are only seven percent of the population and limited to coastal cities Esmeraldas and Valle del Chota, but at any time make up seventy to eighty percent of the senior men’s senior national team. For those wanting more, there is some good journalism in English (here, here and here), academic research as well as a documentary film about how Afro-Ecuadorians (mostly descendants of slaves and a minority) selflessly represent a country not very welcoming to them.
• Benjamin Henrichs, RB Leipzig defender and a member of the German men’s national team, has laid criminal charges against fans who racially abused him during a DFB-Pokal (cup) match against Borussia Dortmund on April 5th. German football magazine, Kicker, also reports that during a match on May 2nd, after Leipzig beat Freiburg 5-1 in the semifinal of the same competition a young fan had abused him. Henrichs had scored the winning goal: “… With the help of some friends, he found the 16-year-old sender, informed the youth's club and called his father: ‘He was shocked, apologized 20 times and was really ashamed of his son.’ Later, the teenager himself called him and apologized as well.”
• May 17th was International Day Against Homophobia. In France, players were asked to wear jerseys with rainbow numbers for that week’s round of games in French league games. Last year only Senegalese international Idrissa Guye (then at Paris Saint Germain, now at Everton) refused to do so. This year, however, the number grew. Donatien Gomis (Guingamp in Ligue 2), Mostafa Mohamed (Nantes) and five Toulouse FC players (Zakaria Aboukhlal, Moussa Diarra, Fares Chaibi, Logan Costa and Said Hamulic), all refused to wear the rainbow colors and declined to play. They’re all of African or North African descent. To cite Jamaica Kincaid out of context: "There is a world of something in this, but I can't go into it right now."
• Yassine Bonou (known as Bono), goalkeeper for Sevilla in La Liga and the Moroccan men’s national team gave an interview to El Pais on the eve of his team’s victory over Juventus in the semifinal of the Europa League. He talks about the influence of Argentina on Moroccan football culture (“… in Morocco there was a time when we consumed a lot of Argentine football. It was free on TV. The way we live soccer in Morocco is very similar to how they live it in Argentina”), Europeans’ propensity to hoard, and, most revealingly, the depression he suffered during the World Cup in Qatar as Morocco was making its historic semifinal run.:
Yes, I had a very bad time. In football there are moments that it seems that you are in jail, as a slave to a lot of things. You finish training and everything is prohibited. You can’t do this, you can’t do that ... Entering that world, if you're not mentally prepared, is complicated. At the World Cup I got into a routine of always being in the room, doing the same thing every day, and I felt anxiety. And look, you play against Canada, the country where I was born. And there is that fear, those negative ideas that if a strange goal comes in there they will say that, of course, since he is Canadian ... People believe that. And then came Spain. And of course, people may think that it is the country that pays me and stuff. The World Cup was not easy. In addition, there was then so much success. I was not prepared for such success. And more when you return to Seville and you are in a situation to fight relegation. It was not easy for me.
• CIES Football Observatory has an “Atlas of Migration,” showing the “origins of expatriate players in leagues around the world. Of African countries, Nigeria, Cote d’Ivoire and Senegal, in that order, have the largest number of players playing overseas. Most of the Nigerian players are in Czech Republic, Slovenia and Armenia.(Via Peter Alegi).
• What I watched: “Eto’o, the goal,” a short 20-minute film from 2005 where Samuel Eto’o, the FC Barcelona forward and Cameroonian international teach a group of FC Barcelona youth players the art of goal scoring. It’s like a time capsule. Eto’o joined FC Barcelona one year earlier and would leave the club in 2009. By then he had scored 108 goals in 144 games. The real star of the film is however a young boy called Keita Balde. Eto’o singles Keita out for instruction and the cameras follows Keita to his house where he is interviewed as his proud mother, Sily Diao, an immigrant from Senegal, looks on. We also know from some research that Eto’o was Keita’s childhood idol. That Keita Balde went on to a decent career with, among others, Lazio, Monaco and Inter Milan (he is not done yet, he is at Spartak Moscow these days). One detail of his biography, not in the short film, but worth repeating is how he left FC Barcelona’s youth structures: In 2010, on a trip to Qatar, Keita, then 15, played a practical joke on teammate (he placed an ice cube on his bed). For this, FC Barcelona exiled him to one of its satellite club UE Cornellà. He played so well that FC Barcelona wanted him back, but he instead opted to go to Serie A.
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