History of Football – Africa
Posted by Paul Boakye on Nov 4th, 2010 and filed under Football. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry
Pele had said that an African country would win a World Cup by the turn of the 21st century. From colonial intervention, poverty and segregation, to independence and dictatorship, this programme measures Africa’s huge potential against its continued failure to succeed at an international level.Through the eyes of its surviving members, this episode charts the spectacular rise, then fall of the 1974 Zaire World Cup Final team, and tells the story of Cameroon’s memorable 1990 World Cup campaign, when a thirty-eight year old became Africa’s first football superstar.
Interviews include Roger Milla, Abedi Pele, Thomas N’kono, Neil Tovey, Pierre Kalala and Issa Hayatou.
Segregation was obligatory in colonial times. It was separation. The blacks didn’t have citizen status, so they couldn’t play against teams made up of whites, who were French citizens. So the whites played amongst themselves, and the blacks said to themselves “We will also try.”
So they began their own teams. In Douala, the first indigenous team was Oryx-Douala, which was made up only of black men. In Yaoundé, the first team called the “Grand Superiors.”
The North African Cup was a competition which united all the clubs of North Africa. There was Algeria, Tunisia, Oran, Constantine and Morocco. This competition woke up the African players. Those were unforgettable matches.
The success of this championship and its popularity amongst the Sudanese encouraged the African Federation to organise a tournament on a biennial basis, to be played in a different country each time.