It's safe to assume that come the Champions League final on 22 May, Africans will be largely rooting for one team - Inter Milan.
Founded with the aim of being open to foreigners, FC Internazionale remain true to their origins with not just a variety of Europeans and South Americans but three Africans as well - in contrast to Bayern Munich's zero.
And though Cameroonians, Ghanaians and Kenyans will be screaming loudest for their stars - Samuel Eto'o, Sulley Muntari and McDonald Mariga respectively - there'll also be enormous continental backing for Jose Mourinho.
Read the rest of this entry
At their first World Cup four years ago, Ghana's campaign came off the wheels when Chelsea star and midfielder missed the second round clash against Brazil.
Even with him the Black Stars' hopes were slim but without a man whose group displays were heroic, those hopes were wafer-thin - as shown when .
Now Ghana's World Cup dreams are being revised again with the may not just miss the last five months of Chelsea's season but June's finals as well, because of a nagging knee problem.
"Until I know how the injury improves, it'll be difficult to say whether I'll make the World Cup," he told this week.
"If not, I'll have to sit at home and support the team like every Ghanaian. It would be a disappointment but the World Cup is the best and most difficult football tournament in the world, and I'd rather be there fully fit."
Essien's absence would be a hammer blow to Ghana's hopes - 'indispensable' is what one former national coach calls him - but his potential absence would be mollified by one thing: the West Africans' outstanding production line of midfield talent.
Read the rest of this entry
and football fans (including myself) grew irritated at yesterday's computer ticketing collapse, leaving many empty-handed, one man sat exceedingly pretty.
He hadn't needed to sleep overnight on the streets of Cape Town nor Johannesburg - where one devoted couple hired a hotel room near a Fifa centre so they could tag-team for a 20-hour marathon that eventually yielded two much-coveted tickets for the final.
Nor had he encountered an unwelcome burst of pepper spray as police took drastic action in Pretoria to control the ticketing frenzy.
For already had his ticket for the final, and the semis, and the two quarters: in fact, cutting to the chase, he has tickets for over half the World Cup matches - courtesy of winning a sponsor's competition last year.
Read the rest of this entry
To say that the chairman of South Africa's World Cup Organising Committee (OC), Irvin Khoza, and his CEO, Danny Jordaan, do not get along is a bit like saying John Terry and Wayne Bridge aren't the best of friends.
And last week, one of the World Cup's most enthralling sub-plots - a tale of power, greed, ambition, political connections and long-established rivalry - lit up like an exploding arms depot. The intrigue could give a run for his money.
On Tuesday, Khoza said he was desperate for South Africa to avoid unwanted World Cup publicity. But his plea was already too late, for the front page headlines two days earlier had screamed , as .
Read the rest of this entry
Born in Wimbledon, my enthusiasm for the global game was already sizeable before the tragic demise of the boys from SW19. Having covered football in over 50 countries, I've been working in the Â鶹Éç's African sports section since the early noughties, recently spending three years in Africa to report on the run-up to the continent's first World Cup.
