Africa Is a Country

Africa Represent

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

Africa Represent

By
Sean Jacobs

If the criteria is the number of African players each team had on the field, you need to root for Inter Milan in the 2010 UEFA Champions League Final.

Samuel Eto'o when he played for Serie A club, Inter Milan (Wiki Commons).

If the choice of which team to root for in 22 May 2010 UEFA Champions League final was based on how many African players they fielded, then apparently you should root for Inter Milan. Milan has three African players on its roster: Samuel Eto’o, Sulley Muntari and McDonald Mariga. That’s of course if Muntari and Mariga get to play.

In contrast, Bayern Munich has zero African players in its team, argues Piers Edwards in his football blog on the BBC’s site.

Didier Drogba in action for Chelsea FC vs Juventus in February 2009. Image: Crystian Cruz, via Flickr CC.

Edwards adds: “…  As excitement mounts across Africa about the looming World Cup, the European final should be the perfect curtain-raiser for the big one and affords Muntari and Mariga the chance to join the select group of Africans to have won the trophy – Bruce Grobbelaar, Abedi Pele, Rabah Madjer, Sammy Kuffuor, Kanu and Djimi Traore prominent amongst them …”

And Milan manager, Jose Mourinho, has a history of trusting African players (even if he inherited them from a previous manager) in key positions–think Benni McCartyhy at Porto or Didier Drogba, Michael Essien and John Mikel Obi at Chelsea.

Further Reading

Leapfrogging literacy?

In outsourcing the act of writing to machines trained on Western language and thought, we risk reinforcing the very hierarchies that decolonization sought to undo.

Repoliticizing a generation

Thirty-eight years after Thomas Sankara’s assassination, the struggle for justice and self-determination endures—from stalled archives and unfulfilled verdicts to new calls for pan-African renewal and a 21st-century anti-imperialist front.

Drip is temporary

The apparel brand Drip was meant to prove that South Africa’s townships could inspire global style. Instead, it revealed how easily black success stories are consumed and undone by the contradictions of neoliberal aspiration.

Energy for whom?

Behind the fanfare of the Africa Climate Summit, the East African Crude Oil Pipeline shows how neocolonial extraction still drives Africa’s energy future.