The Premier League has cut a niche for
itself as the football Mecca where budding
talent go to cut their teeth. The premier
league is so international that it is at times
difficult to find local players in the lineup
and this has caused political nervousness.
The same scene is repeated in the La liga,
Seria A and the Bundesliga and it has
also sparked a political storm in those
countries which has put governments in an
embarrassing position as they grapple with
the real problem of trying to put together
winning teams and still keep a national
identity.
The whole immigration debate, which
was infamously triggered by Trump and
was a campaign issue in most European
countries, has put football teams at a
quandary as they want to build winning
teams when public awareness on
immigration issues is at a peak.
There is a lingering resentment that
although European fans are crazy about
football there are those countries that are
irritated by the fact that their best players
are foreign and hence find it hard to hold
and propagate their jingoist bias.
It is disconcerting when one privately has
racist views and has to cheer along a star
in your team who is of a different race.
Many people find it hard to reconcile what
they are seeing and deep seated prejudices
that are held irrespective of how they were
acquired.
It is even more frustrating when your
team is losing and the person inflicting
the punishment is of a race you consider
inferior. We have seen ugly scenes in
football matches where the fans racially
taunt players when they score.
Then of course we had the World Cup,
that four year extravaganza that keeps the
whole world riveted and new heroes are
made and current ones disappoint. There
is no sporting event that can match the
world cup for sheer drama and suspense.
There are those that lost their life savings
on bets on the outcome of the tournament
and Ochieng is confident that among them
were many Kenyans as we have become
a nation of gamblers for we seem more
interested in leaving our lives to chance
than making them.
But to be fair to those Kenyan gamblers if
your local football is in total shambles it
does make some sort of sense to transfer
ones allegiance to something that seems to
work. So they can name the whole squad
plus reserves in a foreign team but have
no clue who plays for their own national
team, Harambee Stars.
But what made this world cup extra-
special was not the fortunes that were lost
by those who did not even know a country
called Croatia even existed let alone that
they nearly won the world cup and there
are many that think that they should have
won.
One had to admire and be awed by the
110% support the Croatian team got
from their president, a gracious lady that
not only mingled freely with her players,
even donning the team colors but was
magnanimous in defeat and left Russia as
the world’s favorite President.
What made it special was that France won
the world cup, that was not strange, what
was strange was the lineup of the team
that made one think that climate change
is a reality even after Trump denials. The
team line up was definitely not Caucasian
and that sparked a commotion.
Africans in their usual exuberant nature
and trying to be part of a tournament
where they traditionally fare poorly, were
quick to point out that Africa had won
the world cup much to the chagrin and
irritation of the French nationals.
The former US President Barack Obama
even used the French victory as a great
example of what embracing diversity
can do for a country but as expected this
did not go down well in many quarters
especially in his native country where
Trump is attempting to make America
white.
Trevor Noah made a tongue in cheek joke
of the French team and got lambasted by