Writer Kanishk Tharoor has a fantastic essay up in the newest edition of The Cairo Review of Global Affairs. He puts the origins of the beautiful game in context noting that, “…when many societies groaned under the burden of Western domination, football helped restore a measure of dignity to subjugated peoples..” and attempts to explain why it captures our hearts and minds of nations big and small, the world over:
Unlike in the Olympics, in which wealthy superpowers dominate, there is no direct relationship between the prosperity and status of a country and the success of its representatives on the football field. That is why the sport can galvanize such passion and common feeling even in the tiniest of nations. Small countries often coalesce around football. Alongside the other trappings of statehood—passports, a postal system, a currency, and so on—a football team is just as essential a pillar of national identity. When South Sudan came into existence as an independent country in July 2011, it immediately staged a football match between its cobbled-together side and a Kenyan football club. “We are ready to tell the world that South Sudan is around,” the striker Khamis Leiluno proclaimed before the match. South Sudan lost, but the result was incidental to the fact of the game and its confirmation of the independence of South Sudan
The full length piece is well worth a read. Find it here
Africa Redux Founder Chi Kaitano.
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