Book description
A superb portrait of the divided continent of Africa, told through one
of the few things that unites it. Football inspires competition and
inflames passions nowhere as strongly as in Africa. Take the player born
and raised in Congo who scored the winning goal for Rwanda against the
country of his birth and promptly had his house burnt down for his
trouble. Or the Kenyan football chant 'Oliech! Odinga! Obama!', which
celebrates the country's star striker, its popular prime minister and
its most famous adopted son. Meanwhile, the influence of African
football continues to spread rapidly through Europe. Today, no
Premiership team is complete without a major African star - Drogba,
Essien, Touré, Adebayor, and Kanu. Countless African players are now
enriching English football and becoming household names. Steve
Bloomfield's wide-ranging and incisive book investigates Africa's love
of football, its increasing global influence, the build-up to the 2010
WORLD Cup and the social and political backdrop to the greatest show on
earth.
