Africa’s time has come
You couldn’t ask for a more devoted fan of Fabio Capello than me, but thank the Lord for that over-excitable defeat in the Ukraine last weekend. While the brow-furrowed Italian has turned an underachieving bunch of good players into a remarkably high-performance Roller of an outfit, something of a Lehman-style bubble had started to grow around England. It was that much-loved canyon between expectation and achievement: England only had to set foot in the land of the khaki shorts next year and the World Cup was coming home right where it belonged.
But here are some of the teams which, though you might not have noticed to judge from the noise around England, we’ll be sharing floor space with next summer: Holland, Spain, Germany, Italy, not to mention Brazil, hopefully Argentina, and Australia, who in 2006 pushed the eventual winners Italy harder than almost any other side. Of these, Spain are the most perfectly accomplished team in Europe, having at last sorted out their neurosis over club vs country which seemed to stop the national side playing anywhere near their proper level.
They have beaten England 2-0, and won the European Championships last year in a gaspingly perfect free-flowing style; the Germans, with Ballack, Schweinsteiger and Podolski, are still unbeaten in their group and defeated Guus Hiddink’s Russia in Moscow at the weekend thanks to a goal from the ominously efficient Miroslav Klose; Holland played the most beautiful football in Euro 2008, and with Kuyt, de Jong, Robben and van Persie are never less than jaw-droppingly mesmerising, though of course have still to deliver on the world stage what should be their right. Maybe because they think it is their bloody right. But even the Dutch could only manage a 0-0 draw against the Aussies last weekend.
And then of course there’s Africa. Back at Italia ’90, Pele observed that an African country would win the World Cup by the year 2000. Well, he got that wrong but he’s not going to be wrong forever, and the 2010 Cup is on the African continent. Pele was speaking after Cameroon had defeated Argentina, the holders, in the opening match before running rings round England. They were only knocked out after Lineker dived — I mean, went down prematurely — a couple of times in the area to filch two penalties. Cameroon were in many eyes the best team at Italia ’90, and should have graced the final, which was in fact a dreadful affair fought out between Germany and Argentina. But there have always been strong African teams — often all that is holding them back is the corruption and incompetence of their national FAs. France, the holders, lost to Senegal in the opening match of 2002 in Korea, and you could see the scale of that humiliation in the faces of Henry, Viera and Zidane as they walked off at the end.
In 1982 Algeria beat West Germany early on, before falling victim to that shameful 1-0 fix between Germany and Austria where the two teams just passed the ball to each other in a Pythonesque parody of sport to make sure they both went through. Algeria, who by all accounts have played brilliantly in qualifying, should get through again — they would have to lose very heavily to Egypt to miss out.
But look at the African teams that are already through: Ghana, with the outstanding Michael Essien, and the Ivory Coast, with their own totemic Chelsea hero, Didier Drogba. So it might be time to ease back a bit on the hyper-jingoistic twaddle about Capello’s boys, despite the extraordinary job he has done, and look around at the rest of the world.
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