simon robinson

simplicity >>>> Ghanaian boys make do with a hard field and a tattered net

The World Cup | The Global Game   subscribe to TIME Printable Version email this story

Posted Sunday, June 4, 2006; 11.24BST
It follows that Europeans watching the 32 nations taking part in this year’s Cup will be cheering on players they watch every week—though they may be representing nations very far away. Europe’s top clubs scour the globe for talent because it’s harder to find at home. As Europe’s youngsters enjoy the myriad home-based entertainment opportunities now open to them—and become "slaves to the screen," as one top sports administrator puts it—so they are less likely to spend hours kicking a ball around. "Kids don’t play in the streets or in their backyards anymore," says Jürgen Klinsmann, Germany’s coach. "A 10-year-old today won’t be playing 20 to 25 hours per week anymore—every afternoon, for three to four hours, just banging the ball off a wall somewhere." And so to continue to provide top-level entertainment, the best European clubs have had to go much further afield to find their future stars.

Baby snatching has been a particular problem in Africa. In the 1990s, scores of teenagers were leaving countries such as Ghana and Nigeria to play in Europe—many of them in France and Belgium—only to have their dreams dashed when they proved not quite good enough. Many of these kids ended up on the streets of European cities, dropped by the lower division team that had signed them, and were unable even to afford the airfare home. Brazil’s Pelé likened the business to a new slave trade. Over the past few years FIFA has tightened up on the international transfer of players younger than 18. Officially, younger players can now transfer only if their parents also move to the same country "for reasons not related to football," or if the transfer occurs within Europe and the new club makes sure the player still gets an education. Still, interest in young African players continues. Democratic Republic of Congo coach Claude LeRoy says he posted two guards on the hotel elevator during the African Nations Cup in January, to stop agents trying to get to his younger players.

Not all European interest in Africa is bad. Some big European clubs have set up academies in Africa to scout for and train future stars. Many French clubs see former colonies such as Cameroon, Ivory Coast and Senegal as great hotbeds for players as good as Chelsea’s Ivorian star Didier Drogba or Barcelona’s Samuel Eto’o, from Cameroon. But even clubs in nations with weaker ties to Africa such as the Netherlands use the continent as a talent source. Feyenoord set up an academy in Ghana in 1999, while Ajax uses a team in Cape Town as its African base.

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In a deliberate attempt to yoke football to development strategies, South Africa will host the 2010 Cup. Sepp Blatter, the president of FIFA, explicitly wants the tournament to act as a driver for African development. In one sense, that’s an odd claim, because South Africa boasts well-developed cities and infrastructure and a sophisticated economy not found in any of the 48 other nations south of the Sahara. So the African country that least needs development won the Cup designed to develop Africa. But South Africa still needs to improve its economy, and the promised development before the Cup—including an ultramodern train line connecting Johannesburg, Pretoria and Johannesburg International Airport—may help. Beyond that, Blatter has said that the 2010 tournament should belong to all of Africa, not just its southern tip.

FIFA plans to spend $100 million on football in the developing world in the next four years, much of it in Africa. Certainly there’s no hesitation on the business side; sponsorship deals finalized with just five of FIFA’s Partners for 2010 and 2014 are already 25% bigger than the deals done with all 15 Official Partners for Germany this summer. "The market trusts Africa," Blatter pointedly said in April. Outside its borders, most of the world thinks that Africa is poor, full of wars and disease, famine and horrors. A successful 2010 Cup might help, just a little, to change such attitudes.

Fans, of course, already know what Africans can do. At the pitch off Independence Avenue in Accra, the first game of the afternoon is Walaga FC against Savers Academy FC. Walaga are the reigning champions, as they will tell you at every possibility. And no wonder—they are fast, skillful and confident. At half-time, Walaga are 4-1 up, and Savers’ goalie seems to have given up, his shoulders sagging and his movements slow and halfhearted. Savers’ coach rips into his charges and the kids stand around, scuffing their boots into the ground. Under a tree, the boys from Kingdoko FC change into their bright orange shirts, preparing to take on the Tudu Boys. The players from Kingdoko say they love Thierry Henry and Zinédine Zidane and want to play in Europe one day. "I want to make a name for myself," says one, "an international name. In Africa it’s hard to make a name." If football helps him do it (and why not?) that would be one more reason to remember that whatever adjective you put before it—simple, beautiful, global—what’s taking place on the dusty, hard-baked field in Accra is a lot more than a game. But you knew that already.

With reporting by Aryn Baker/New Delhi, Mick Brunton and Adam Smith/London, Bruce Crumley/Paris, Andrew Downie/Rio de Janeiro, Yuki Oda/Tokyo, Amany Radwan/Cairo and Jodi Xu/Beijing

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