World kup is koming to Afrikaaa!

By Adwait at 5 December, 2009, 1:16 pm

There’s one thing in the world which will never ever cease to get my attention. I’ll always be interested in it. It’s a simple eight letter word, known to everyone in this world as football.

Football is unarguably the world’s most popular sport. More than three and a half billion people are associated with the sport making it the most participated sport in the world. The sport is played both at an international and club level. At the club level each independent country acts as a host to various leagues. Every country has its own independent league. For example, the United Kingdom hosts the Barclays Premier League or more commonly known as the English Premiership. Similarly in France we have the League 1, in Germany the Bundesliga and in Italy we have the Series A. All the clubs participating in these leagues are from different cities or sports club located within the national boundaries. There are various divisions. Based on your performance in the league, the teams are either promoted into the next division, or relegated into the lower division. That’s club football.

There are no such restrictions within the clubs. Any man from any country can play in any club he wishes to, provided he is offered a contract from the club (that is if the club wants the player). Hence an Englishman can play in Africa, an Aussie can play in England and a French national can play in Spain. That’s how football binds one-another. I believe it’s a unifying sport, rather the language of the world. Now as I mentioned earlier, the sport is played at a national level too. One of the biggest tournaments held once every 4 years, the FIFA football world cup, the platform where each footballer wishes to raise the cup alongside his fellow team-mates and country men, wearing his nation’s flag, like superman tied behind him like a cape.

The FIFA World Cup has always been a major sporting event and the next edition of the tournament is to be held in South Africa. Various African nations play football, and have contributed some of their best players to the game.
Roger Milla (Cameroon), Rigobert Song (Cameroon), Samuel Eto’o (Cameroon), Dider Drogba (Cote d’Ivore), Micheal Essien (Ghana), Seydou Kieta (Mali), Jean Manga-Onguene (Cameroon), Abedi Pele (Ghana), Jay-Jay Okocha (Nigeria), Nwankwo Kanu (Nigeria), Sameul Kuffor (Ghana) and Mido (Egypt), to name a few are some of the very best African footballers.

Ghana, Nigeria, Egypt, Senegal, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivore, South Africa and Algeria are slowly catching up with the might of other footballing nations from the other continents.

South Africa is an interesting choice as hosts. It isn’t a country which has had a big impact on football. Actually there are only two South Africans I know who play professional football in England. One is Steven Pienaar who plays his club football in Liverpool, England for Everton F.C. And the other is Aaron Mokoena who is a central defender who plays his club football in Portsmouth, for Portsmouth F.C.

It’s good to see such a major tournament like the FIFA world cup to be hosted in South Africa. So whenever an African player scores a goal, when playing for his club, watch his mouth closley, you can make out that he is lip-sincing ‘World kup is koming to Afrikaaa !’

Adwait Patil, the author is a first year law student (and a midfielder) at Pune Law College and credits the title of this post to his classmate and a fellow soccer fan, Mihir Mekal

Never seen you before! Subscribe to RSS feed get regular updates from my blog.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed! Hope to see you again

Categories : Technology