My friend Eric brought me a present from his latest trip to Africa: a margarine-yellow soccer jersey with racy red stripes that slash down from the shoulders. Apparently, this replica jersey looks just like the one worn by players on the national team of Benin. Over the years Eric has graced my Brooklyn apartment with many African artifacts—woven baskets, colorful wall hangings, a candlestick—but as soon as I saw it, the Benin soccer jersey became my favorite of his gifts from abroad.
Still, as I squirmed into the bright, tight-fitting shirt, I had to ask, “Where is Benin?”
“Bri,” Eric said, a little distraught, “you can’t have people coming up to you on the streets of New York, embracing you, telling you in French how much they love your Beninese jersey, all the while not knowing where Benin is.”
Eric, of course, was right. So here goes: Benin is a torch-shaped nation squeezed between Togo and Nigeria in Western Africa. Its boundaries were carved out by 19th-century English and French colonial bureaucrats who weren’t savvy (or concerned) about what the people of the region cared about. So Beninese citizens in the northern part of the country feel more cultural affinity with their transnational neighbors to the west and east, in Togo and Nigeria, than to their southern compatriots.
I’d like to think that during Benin’s recent quest to qualify for the World Cup, the whole country was unified in support of its football team (needless to say, in Benin people refer to soccer as “football”). Whether or not they were able to rally a nationwide fan-base, though, Benin’s team won’t be playing in the World Cup in South Africa this summer. Like a lot of smaller, underfunded World Cup hopefuls, Benin—surely an underdog’s underdog—didn’t perform well enough in their regional qualifying matches to earn a berth in the quadrennial tournament of global soccer powers. Despite courageous performances by the young striker Mohamed Aoudou, Benin must settle for a spot in the African Nations Cup, and that’s not bad for a nation whose supporters sometimes refer to it as a “soccer minnow.” Like most of the rest of us, the Beninese players will be watching the World Cup from stadium seats and bar stools, spectators instead of competitors on sport’s grandest stage.
On Friday, December 4, the 32 teams that did qualify for the 2010 World Cup found out who their first-round opponents would be. The first-round draw, which might have been tidily summed up in an eight-frame Powerpoint presentation, was instead transformed into a ritualistic live performance featuring Charlize Theron, who is apparently a proud South African soccer fan. 200 million people watched on TV and online as Theron, a native of South Africa, stood onstage in a simple red dress and occasionally held up a slip of paper. Not exactly Oscar-worthy stuff, but she got to smooch David Beckham, whose current haircut looks suspiciously like a badger pelt.
One of the scandals of last week’s World Cup draw was that France was granted an easy first-round schedule. France qualified only after cheating against Ireland: the French star Thierry Henry committed an obvious handball that went unnoticed by referees, and in the next moment France scored a goal. Many feel France should have been punished for this high-profile transgression, but instead they were offered a platter of cream-puffs, also known as “Group A.” France will play South Africa, Uruguay and Mexico in the opening round. Mexico is no pushover, but let’s just say South Africa probably wouldn’t even have qualified for the tournament if they weren’t hosting it. So naughty France will most likely make it through to the second round of the tournament without much trouble.
One of the most intriguing first-round matches will be played on June 12 between England and the United States. The American player Landon Donovan, when he found out he’d have a shot at his club teammate David Beckham in the World Cup, could barely keep from drooling: “This is going to be awesome,” Donovan said. “I can’t wait.” Plenty of American soccer fans (if “plenty” is a quantifier that can accurately be applied to the phrase “American soccer fans”) agree that the match against England will be a thrill to watch, or at least a thrill to prepare to watch. But the majority of Americans barely noticed the World Cup draw—judging from comparative media coverage, they’ve been much more engrossed by another tidbit of sports-related news: the Tiger Woods mishegos. Woods, who not long ago appeared in a shaving cream commercial alongside the aforementioned Thierry Henry, has been having a rough go of it, in case you didn’t know. Tiger, Tiger, burning bright—his marriage, his mother-in-law and his (allegedly) many madams dragged into the public square. In the shaving cream ad, after striding through a ripply projected image of himself winning glory on the golf course, Woods intones, “The only day that matters—is today.” That sporty mantra doesn’t seem to be helping Tiger much lately. But if Landon Donovan and the rest of the US national soccer team take it to heart, they could pull off a big upset in June with their first World Cup victory over England since 1950. It wouldn’t be quite as shocking as the African nation of Benin taking down a major power in world football, but it would sweet.
