Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
For me that was the first book that really tried to look at football through the political lens. It was just ahead of the 1994 World Cup in the US and it tells you just as much today as it did then, and it set the template for a whole genre of using football to explain a whole country. He talks about the enmity between Holland and Germany told through football and he has a lovely chapter on Cameroon, and on Roger Milla [who scored four goals for Cameroon at the age of 38] at the World Cup in 1990.
Football Against the Enemy, by Simon Kuper.
For me that was the first book that really tried to look at football through the political lens. It was just ahead of the 1994 World Cup in the US and it tells you just as much today as it did then, and it set the template for a whole genre of using football to explain a whole country. He talks about the enmity between Holland and Germany told through football and he has a lovely chapter on Cameroon, and on Roger Milla [who scored four goals for Cameroon at the age of 38] at the World Cup in 1990.
Who is the enemy for Cameroon?
For the people, you could argue that the enemy is the government. You have an autocratic regime that has used football to boost its own popularity and as a diversion from the problems they themselves have caused.
Do you think football fans take on the enmity even when they don’t understand where it comes from?
Yes. English fans will sing along against Germany: ‘Two world wars and one World Cup…’ and a lot of them not only weren’t alive for the wars, they weren’t even alive for the 1966 World Cup. I think these things often become part of the national psyche. Look at what happened in Egypt when they played Algeria last year. After Egypt lost there were riots in the streets – the government was very adept at turning that anger against Algeria, making it about politics not football.
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Steve Bloomfield has been based in Nairobi since 2006, reporting from 25 countries across Africa. A former Africa correspondent for The Independent, he now writes for a range of publications including Monocle and The Observer and has also written for Newsweek, GQ and Esquire. His book Africa United: How Football Explains Africa (Africa-united.co.uk) is a political and cultural look at 13 African countries through their approach to football.
