Royal Bafokeng Stadium, Rustenburg. United States vs. Ghana, 26 June 2010.

Photo credit: manfrotto tripods on Flickr, via the Pitch Invasion Photo Pool.

Take, for example, Suarez’s last-minute handball on the line to deny Ghana what was surely the winning goal. In rugby, there would have been no need for a penalty — a penalty goal would have been awarded. Or Lampard’s shot against the Germans. Again, in rugby, if the referee wasn’t sure, he could request a video replay. On a basic level, it seems that Sepp Blatter would be well-employed to drop by on his oval ball counterparts.

The new Hand of God, or why Suarez should be free to handle on the line again

When Luis Suarez palmed away Dominic Adiyah’s goalbound header in the final minute of stoppage time in Ghana’s quarter final meeting with Uruguay, it was the very definition of cynical. His foul denied the Ghanaians a clear goalscoring opportunity and when Asamoah Gyan blasted the subsequent penalty into the crossbar rather than the net, the outrage began.

With both Adiyah and John Mensah missing from the spot in the penalty shoot-out to send Uruguay through, the outrage hit fever pitch, especially on Twitter, where there were suggestions that Ghana had been robbed, and comparing Suarez’s handball to that of Thierry Henry’s in France’s playoff against the Republic of Ireland.

At the very least it seemed perverse that a player could indulge in that level of cheating and seemingly get away with it. Hence the calls for teams to be awarded a penalty goal rather than face the uncertainty of a spot kick.

But before the knee-jerk it’s worth considering one major difference between the handballs of Henry and Suarez: the Frenchman got away with his, with the diminutive Uruguayan didn’t. The referee spotted Suarez’s hands knocking Adiyah’s header away, sent him off, and awarded a penalty to Ghana.

Suarez was punished according to the letter of the law and couldn’t be blamed for Gyan’s missed penalty. The referee had acted according to the letter of the law and given Ghana another chance to cement their place in the semi-finals – a chance that, statistically, they were more likely than not to succeed at.

Given that more penalties are converted than missed, you could even go as far to say as what really killed Ghana’s chances was losing the toss to decide who went first in the shootout. The team taking the first penalty typically wins 60 per cent of shootouts.

But that’s statistics. What we’re talking about here are the rules that allowed Suarez to handball at the expense of a goal, which has lead calls for football to introduce a penalty goal, along the lines of rugby’s penalty try.

Paying the penalty

Briefly, in rugby, if the referee believes the defending team has prevented a try by committing an offence, he can award a penalty try. Crucially, the referee has to believe a try would probably have been scored (or, in rugby league, believes, in his opinion, that a try would have been scored but for the conduct of the defending team). In other words, the referee’s opinion is the final say on a penalty try.

Therefore, this isn’t as clear cut as proponents of penalty goals — such as ex-referee Graham Poll — would have you believe, if you were to apply it to football. It brings the referee’s opinion even further into play, and with it more possibility of human error. Often the penalty try is one of the more disputed calls in rugby.

Suarez’s case is unusually clear cut, insofar as we can be reasonably sure that the ball would have gone into the net had the striker not handled the ball (although he was in such a position to attempt to head the ball). But the problem comes when you then apply the rule practically to the game.

Let’s say on the back of Suarez’s handball, FIFA introduced a directive saying a player who deliberately handles on the line has clearly denied a goalscoring opportunity and the referee should award a goal rather than a penalty.

Firstly, this would mean Harry Kewell’s contentious red card in Australia’s game against Ghana would have resulted in Australia being penalised by one goal rather than giving Gyan the chance to score from the spot.

Secondly, suppose after this directive is implemented, a situation occurs in a high-profile game where a player rounds the goalkeeper and is about to pull the trigger but is hauled back before they can roll the ball into an empty net by a desperate defender. A penalty is award and the defender is sent off but the penalty is saved. The directive is widened.

Then an increasing number of situations occur when a clear goalscoring opportunity is denied, some of them outside the box. Each one increases the argument for awarding a goal for this, but increases the judgement call the referee has to make.

Inevitably the referee will award a goal erroneously at some point in another high-profile game, where a penalty would have been a suitable punishment instead.

In short, implementing this directive would increase the pressure on the fallibility of the referee. The laws for a handball on the line may not be morally just but they are fair and consistent.

A brief moral diversion

It’s also worth pointing out that Suarez’s handball was an extremely unusual circumstance. Normally a player who ‘takes one for the team’ by committing a professional foul does so in the knowledge that they will be putting their team at a disadvantage for a period of play and, in tournament football, ruling themselves out of the next match.

In Suarez’s case, this issue did not come into play. As this was literally the last kick of the game, Uruguay wouldn’t have been disadvantaged by losing a man for the rest of the game. Similarly, the outcome for Suarez would have been the same: he wouldn’t have played in a semi-final regardless of whether he handled the ball or not.

But by sacrificing himself at the last possible moment of the game, he ensured his team stood more of a chance of progressing than if he didn’t handle (a utilitarian action rather than a deontological one).

These situations don’t occur that regularly in football, so to introduce a system based more on human error of the basis that it works in another sport is questionable. You can also argue that Uruguay paid the price for Suarez’s actions as they faced their toughest game without one of their best players.

Watch it again, Sam

But Suarez’s handball hasn’t been the only case where football has been advised to look to rugby for tightening up the rules, in this case video technology for goals, when two high profile errors in one day saw a clamour for FIFA to return to look at the issue.

First, Frank Lampard’s shot against Germany was adjudged not to have crossed the line when replies showed that it clearly had, then Carlos Tevez opening goal for Argentina against Mexico was allowed to stand despite coming from a significant offside position. Again, there was a call for video replays.

In rugby, these are used when the referee cannot be sure that the ball has been placed over the try line. Instead he will ask the video referee if there is any reason why he cannot award a try and base his decision on this recommendation. Similarly, in cricket, the video umpire is used for contentious decisions, usually around lbw.

It’s worth pointing out that even video refereeing isn’t flawless and can’t always be used to provide a clear cut answer, Mark Cueto’s disallowed try for England against South Africa in the 2007 World Cup Final being a prime example. Although the video official was probably right, you can still find plenty of rugby professionals who believe the try should have stood.

But if video replays had been available, would they have helped in either case? Probably not for Tevez’s goal. The linesman missed the striker’s offside and the referee saw no reason not to believe his colleague’s decision that the goal should have stood.

In Lampard’s case, the referee may have chosen to stop play to check whether the ball had crossed the line or not, although again, this would be down to the discretion of the officials. Video replays would only be useful if the officials were able to make the most of them at the time. If the referee saw no cause for doubt then it is unlikely they would be deployed.

As with the Suarez case, the thin end of the wedge argument comes into play here. If video replays were made available to the referee then at what point should the line be drawn. Goals? Penalties? Red card offences? Throw-ins? It’s fine to say take the principle from another sport, but it has to be workable for football.

One further option on top of this would be to give managers the option to challenge decisions by the officials, along the lines of American Football and tennis. While fairer to teams as a whole, whether it should be implemented depends very much on your view of whether it would break up the game to an unacceptable extent or not.

Hawk-eyes

Perhaps a fairer if less wide-ranging solution would be the use of goal-line technology to determine whether or not the ball has crossed the line. In this instance, football would be looking to cricket and tennis, where the Hawk-eye system is in place, rather than rugby.

Quite simply, this would — either via electronic communication or a separate video official — inform the referee whether or not a ball had crossed the line. Or, as an alternative, have the referee refer to Hawk-eye for a decision on a goal.

The goal line technology perhaps has a more pressing case to be solved than the unusual Suarez situation. While still uncommon, there are enough poor goal-line decisions, such as the phantom goal in Reading v Watford or Pedro Mendes’ 40-yard chip for Spurs against Manchester United, that justifies bringing the technology in. Not to mention that genuine goals that aren’t usually have far more of an impact on a game than a handball on the line.

Unlike video referees, there’s also less of a risk of human error here. Granted, technology can take the fun out of the game but in this case, it’s worth being correct rather than relying on human error. A good goal not given is far more galling than a bad tackle.

It’s also worth pointing out that Hawk-eye, and video technology in general, doesn’t reach down to all levels of the game in whichever sport we’re talking about. Rugby, tennis and cricket all only have the technology available to certain levels. It’s not ideal, but it shows how hard it is to reach grassroots with any form of technology.

Speak when you’re spoken to

But amid all the talk of importing rules from rugby, there’s one law where football could learn a lot from its oval ball counterpart. There’s no need for technology, no cost involved and it could be applied to grassroots football: only the captain can speak to the referee.

In rugby, it’s the captain’s job to be responsible for his team and answer to the referee. Dissent is not tolerated and players surrounding the officials is uncommon and often dealt with by a card. This isn’t to say the sport doesn’t still have issues with player behaviour, but there’s a lot more control on the pitch.

The FA have mooted this idea from time to time, most recently around the Respect campaign, while UEFA considered such a move in 2006, as part of a wider consideration in retaining referees in the game.

Suarez’s handball was cheating but was such a large talking point because it was so unusual, as were the calls for a penalty goal.

The odd goal that isn’t given in error is more common but still rare. And while video replays would solve a lot of arguments, they’re by no means conclusive, or even necessary.

In contrast, players intimidating and swearing at the referee is a common occurrence on pitches week in week out at every level. I know which issue I’d rather see dealt with first.

One day, about two years ago, an unlikely story unfolded in front of his eyes, featuring men who were very much not locals: “A soccer game started on one of the fields I was walking by. I photographed and took video of this experience. Later on after taking the video, I learned that the team was the Ghana national team! Amazing and random all at the same time.”

Ghana In Fog from Paul Octavious on Vimeo. Thank you to Joel for the tip.

This is the fourth in series of miscellaneous perspectives on the World Cup groups and nations (here’s

This is the second time around for the teams of Group D.  It is the only quartet in the tournament comprised of four teams who were also at the World Cup in 2006 (so long as we stretch a bit by allowing an independent Serbia to substitute for 2006’s ‘Serbia and Montenegro’).  While that may mean something about big game experience, for my miscellany series it means better writers than I have already done the hard work: Ghana, Serbia, Australia, and Germany were all covered in my sacred book, the 2006 Thinking Fans Guide to the World Cup.  So I thought I’d turn the introduction over to them, selecting excerpts from longer essays on each:

Here’s British author Geoff Dyer on Serbia (and Montenegro—as they were combined in 2006):

“I could be wrong, could have been unduly influenced by Rebecca West’s belief ‘that acceptance of tragedy…is the basis of Slav life,’ but it should not be assumed that all teams attending the World Cup actually want to win it.  We hear much about the will to win; the idea of choking is taken as a tightening up, a defeat brought about by wanting too badly to win.  But there is also a will to lose.  We English know all about this.  Chris Waddle succumbed to it in Italy ’90.  Something in his English heart—and in ours too—craved defeat, shame, the taste of ashes in the mouth.  The urge does not usually manifest itself so simply.  Ideally one wants to feel wronged, cheated, robbed, betrayed.  The Serbs will not win the World Cup but they might achieve their goal: to crash out as a result of some error of their own which is either compounded by or—even better—indistinguishable from a decision by referees or linesmen who have been duped by the cunning of the opposition who are themselves in cahoots with FIFA.  ‘Only part of us is sane,’ writes Rebecca West, ‘only part of us loves pleasure and the longer day of happiness, wants to live to our nineties and die in piece, in a house that we build, that shall shelter those who come after us.  The other half of us is nearly mad.  It prefers the disagreeable to the agreeable, loves pain and its darker night despair, and wants to die in a catastrophe that will set back life to its beginnings and leave nothing of our house save its blackened foundations.’

History plays a part in this.  No one in England can remember anything about football from before the 1966 World Cup.  But in Serbia, I imagine, people remember incidents and talking points from every game since the dawn of time.  This also occurs within the context of an individual match.  X fouls Y because Y fouled him because he was fouled by X…As I understand the Serbian mentality there are always prior offenses to be taken into account.  That’s why the Serbian writer Vesna Goldsworthy begins Chernobyl Strawberries, her memoir of growing up in Belgrade, with an epigraph from Wittgenstein: ‘It is difficult to find the beginning.  Or better; it is difficult to begin at the beginning, and not to try to go further back.”

Here’s British novelist Ben Rice writing about his wife’s home country, imagining what it must have been like to play in Australia’s world record 31-0 thrashing of American Samoa (back when the Socceroos had to play preliminary qualifiers in the Oceania region):

“You are killing the American Samoans.  By halftime you have bagged six goals, more than you’ve scored in an entire season for the Serie A side where you play your club football.  If you liked you could wheel on a gas Barbie, cook up some prawns, have a few beers, make love to a beautiful woman right here on the pitch, and probably score a few more.  But you get no pleasure from this game.  It is nice to be home, bloody oath it is, but despite the vast improvement to your international goal stats, you are miserable.  It’s a bloody farce.  The fans are already barracking for the opposition.  Some of them are leaving.  Your coach has fallen asleep on the sideline.  And one of these American Samoans, you can’t fail to notice, is young enough to be your kid.

Your mates back in Italy will just assume football in Australia has an entirely different scoring system.  You will never be taken seriously.  You consider suggesting to the referee that you play without a goalkeeper, that you play blindfolded, that you withdraw half your team from the field, or offer your opponents a twenty goal cushion to make more of a game of it, but you know this will not help; if anything it will only reinforce the amateurishness of the contest.  And then it hits you—the only decent way to make the organizers appreciate your plight is by creating a massive comedy scoreline, a scoreline that will hopefully transmit the message that soccer deserves a proper place in the sporting psyche of the nation.”

Here’s British writer Caryl Phillips on Ghana:

“In August 2005 I sat on a crowded British Airways jet that was flying from London to Accra.  Seated all around me were the players and coaches of the Black Stars—the Ghanaian national football team—who, the previous evening, had drawn 1-1 in a friendly match with Senegal that had been played in London at the ground of Brentford Football Club.  The players were polite, relatively quiet, and displayed good manners and behavior of a type that one would never expect from an equivalent group of English players.  An hour into the flight one player tapped me on the shoulder and politely asked if he might ‘borrow’ my iPod, while another player eyed my newspaper until I folded it in half and offered it to him.  It appeared that these young men did not have much in the way of material possessions; in fact, I had seen better kitted-out high school teams, and the mind boggled when one realized that by contrast with their own seemingly modest lifestyles, one of their teammates, Michael Essien, had just been transferred from Lyon to Chelsea for $40 million and was earning more than $75,000 per week.  In fact, he probably earned enough in one half-hour stretching session in the gym to equip all of his teammates with iPods.  Of course, Michael Essien was not on the flight.  He had remained behind in London, but as I somewhat self-consciously listened to my music I wondered just what kind of a cohesive team spirit could possibily be engendered in a squad of players where First and Third World values clashed so crudely.

Three months later, Ghana qualified for its first-ever World Cup appearance…”

Here’s Der Spiegel journalist Alexander Osang, who grew up in East Germany before reunification, on Germany:

“With reunification there was an opportunity for change—no more GDR and no more GDR national team—but I couldn’t let go of the past.

I watched the 1990 World Cup semifinal, between Germany and England, on a big screen in the Berlin Lustgarten, with thousands of people.  England’s Paul Gascoigne cried, and I cried too when Germany won.  I stood among rejoicing German fans, very alone.  I Couldn’t watch the final against Argentina.  I simply couldn’t bear it.  I drove my seventeen-year-old Polski Fiat, a gift from my brother-in-law before he fled to the West, to a residential area in Berlin and parked there for ninety minutes.  I sat in the stillness of the city and waited.  When I heard the screams and the fireworks, I knew that it was over.  Germany had won and I had lost again.  Later I learned that the game had been decided by a penalty kick, taken by Andreas Brehme, a blond defender; a typical German goal.  After winning the championship, Franz Beckenbauer, who’d coached the team, predicted that a reunified soccer-Germany would be undefeated for years.

In 1999 I moved to New York to leave it all behind.  I didn’t have a soccer team anymore—why not live in a country that didn’t care about soccer?  Things went well.  I only encountered the game in the tiny tables at the back of the New York Times sports section.  Or sometimes, watching my son play in Prospect Park, when another father made a friendly reference to the great German soccer tradition, and I’d nod, smiling.  Some things you can’t explain.”

Group D: The Group of _______________

The idea that in soccer there are ‘some things you can’t explain’ is both disturbing and comforting to me: I had a tough time tracking down clever non-soccer related statistics for Group D.  Beyond learning a few odd facts (did you know Serbia is the country with the most chess grandmasters per capita in the World Cup?), I mostly learned that these are four extremely disparate countries.  They do, however, share pretty good soccer teams.

Though I’m with those describing Group G (Brazil, North Korea, Cote d’Ivoire, and Portugal) as the tournament’s actual ‘Group of Death,” Group D could also make a good statistical argument for itself.  Group D has the highest average FIFA ranking of any quartet in the World Cup, and the best average betting odds on winning the whole thing.  That is mostly because there is no true patsy in this group; each takes its sporting cultures seriously.  In fact, this group would also have the highest average FIFA ranking of any in the tournament if it were a Women’s World Cup—the Germans and the Australians are even better on the women’s side as on the men’s, and the Ghanaians are among the best women’s teams in Africa.

But still, what strikes me as most notable about this group is where I started: it’s the only group where each team was also there in 2006.  And aside from Germany, if we stretch the facts a little it is almost the case that 2010 is the second time around for each of these teams: Australia did manage to have a mostly amateur team qualify in 1974 but this is only their second appearance since then, and Serbia was represented regularly in various Yugoslav incarnations, but still…I’m going with the Group of Teutons and Second Chances.

Who would advance if there were any justice in the world?

In calculating who would advance with my secret formula of soccer history and global politics, for Group D I’m hopelessly biased in regard to soccer history.  As a US fan I still harbor anger towards the Germans for the cheating hand of Torsten Frings that kept the Americans from the semi-finals.  I’m also somewhat bitter about Ghana being awarded a controversial and critical penalty in 2006 due to the simple fact that Oguchi Onyewu is a much larger man than Razak Pimpong.  But on that one I’d rather blame the referee.  Let’s see, who was that again?  Oh, right—Markus Merk.  German!  With that, and a desire to prove that it is not only English fans tormented by the Deutscher Fußball-Bund, in my mind Germany is out.

Ghana, on the other hand, gets my sympathies.  Ghana was the first independent African country, it is often held up as a model of relative democratic stability on the continent, and it is the place that gave us Freddy Adu.  Ghana also happens to be the poorest country (by GDP per capita) in the tournament, making them the truest underdog.  I’ve also always liked the Ghanaian flair for team names: Accra Hearts of Oak is one of my all-time favorites for club teams, and I find the story behind the ‘Black Stars’ fascinating (Ghana’s independence leader Kwame Nkrumah named the team after the ‘Black Star’ shipping line imagined by Marcus Garvey to connect the African Diaspora).  So Ghana is in.

In regard to soccer justice, I can’t say much between Australia and Serbia.  It is a bit disappointing that Neven Subotić played for the US at the U-17 and U-20 levels (and even played some at the University of South Florida) before switching to Serbia, but at least he was born in the former Yugoslavia—he’s traitorousness is nowhere near that of Giuseppe Rossi.  I also have some bad memories of travelling through Australia in my younger days and getting endlessly hassled for being in a short-lived bohemian phase.  But overall I feel some kinship with the Aussie soccer fans in that the momentum of the game in that country, gradually overcoming hints of xenophobia and the pull of another idiosyncratic football code, feels akin to what’s happening in the US.  I suspect, on the other hand, that soccer is robust enough in Serbia to survive—and if Geoff Dwyer is right, maybe even thrive—with a first round exit.

So from my completely subjective standpoint, if there were any justice in the world Ghana and Australia would advance from Group D.  But keep in mind, there is rarely any justice in the world.

Group D – Some Stats

Photo credit: sarahebsgaard on Flickr, via the Pitch Invasion Photo Pool.

Lamptey was the Ghanaian of whom Pele said, having watched him in 1989 as a fifteen-year-old, “Lamptey is my natural successor.” Capped by 38 times by age 21, in 1991 he outshone Veron and Adriano and Gallardo and Del Piero at the 1991 U-17 World Cup, winning the Golden Ball. The New York Times even reported on him, calling him “The Boy Who Would Be Soccer’s King”.

His journey to Europe had not been easy. Ghana’s authorities revoked his passport, but he ran away to Nigeria, and from there to Belgium, signing for Anderlecht. They changed the rules so he could play for the first team at fifteen.

This video, explaining his moves from Ghana to Anderlecht to PSV Eindhoven, shows Lamptey at his liminal point: dominating the Dutch league, still scoring for Ghana, still smiling. The world was his.

That is the only video of Lamptey available on YouTube. For not long after that, transferred to Aston Villa and later Coventry City under Ron Atkinson, his career went into freefall. Only this week has he finally talked at length about the personal tragedy and torment that became his life in the late 1990s, as he became etched in history as a cautionary tale. He has ended up playing a mere two hundred games stretched across ten countries on four continents.

Lamptey’s childhood was horrific. He was abused by both parents, fleeing to Europe not so much for the riches but to get away from his childhood, as the Observer explains. “At times he was too scared to go home, sleeping under a car or in a kiosk on the streets to avoid a beating or worse. ‘I did not have a family relationship. It was bad,’ he says.”

Even the money he made in Europe he was swindled out of by greedy agents, not understanding the paperwork he was signing, speaking kindly only of Ron Atkinson for ensuring he was, for once, not robbed of his money.

It started off well for Lamptey in England in 1994, a brilliant solo goal against Wigan hinting at his talent; but injuries, inconsistency and a change of management (with Brian Little replacing Atkinson) spoiled his time at Villa.

Lamptey followed Big Ron to Coventry, where he again only shone occasionally, before losing his place after Atkinson again lost his job. He was denied a work permit.

His failure in England on the pitch was matched by an even greater disaster at the 1996 African Nations Cup, where he was sent-off in a losing effort in the semi-finals against South Africa. He was discarded by Ghana at the age of 26.

Lamptey’s personal life is an even more tragic tale, as he moved to Argentina to play for Union Santa Fe on loan from Boca Juniors. He lost two children young, and his family has disowned him for his cross-tribal marriage; he believes he may be cursed, as he explained:

He even hints at dark forces at work, believing there may have been two spiritualist curses put on him, one because he left his Muslim team to go to Europe, the other because he chose a wife from what his own family deemed the ‘wrong race’. ‘It was taken from me. It is really, really painful. Sometimes I’ll be in my room and just cry,’ he says. [..]
‘I have been through hell, through so much pain,’ he tells Observer Sport in the school office, sitting underneath a framed Chinese proverb that reads ‘If life does not give you all that you want, rejoice that you are alive’.

‘If I could write a book about it, it would be something else, I tell you. But how can I do that, when I can’t even write a letter?’ he says.

Lamptey expands on this theory to the Sunday Herald.

The blame for most of his misfortune, Lamptey has no doubt, lies with witchcraft and the juju men who stalk football in west Africa. Things began to go wrong with his first international for Ghana, away to Togo in 1991. “It was there. I can’t hide it,” he said. “I was vomiting blood on the pitch. So it is there when people want your downfall. I know if it was me alone and people had left me to be the way God created me and wanted me to be, for sure I should have been playing for Madrid now.”

He now runs a farm in Accra with 102 cattle, and he has also set-up the Glow-Lamp School in Ghana, a source of great pride for Lamptey, giving hundreds the education he so sorely missed himself. He cannot bring himself to go to the African Nations Cup matches in Ghana going on presently: still just 33, he knows he should be playing instead of watching.

In the Guardian, Paul Doyle wrote:

I’ve been to two matches so far and though neither featured the hosts, Ghanaians have been generous in their support for the other teams. If the organisers had been equally generous in their ticket pricing (the cheapest is four cedis, or over US$4), the stadiums would have been packed. As it was, Accra’s Ohene Djan Stadium was little over half-full for Tuesday’s bout between a regal Ivory Coast side and the disappointingly tame Eagles of Mali. But still the noise was incredible.

And Reuters explains the difficulties for local fans, and offers a creative solution:

Tunisia coach Roger Lemerre believes that the empty stadiums are part of the African reality. Few locals can afford tickets, he says, and those who can are unlikely to want to spend hard-earned cash to watch two teams from distant countries.

The huge distances and lack of cheap flights make it almost impossible for ordinary fans from other countries to be present, apart from those who are flown in at the expense of their own governments or team sponsors.

“You just don’t get the travelling fans,” said Lemerre. “It’s a long way to come from South Africa and Morocco and, even if the supporters could get here, there is still the problem of accommodation.”

But could organisers try to find more creative solutions?

When the new stadium in Tamale, venue for the Group D matches, was officially inaugurated, fans were allowed in for free and the arena was so packed that all those under the age of 15 were asked to leave.

Allowing locals in for free instead of charging them up to a month’s salary for a seat seems an obvious option. After all, most of the flag-waving, drum-beating visiting fans you see at the Nations Cup are on all-expenses paid trips, while the media areas are also full on hangers-on. It would hardly be unfair to them.

As the knockout phase begins, one hopes we’ll see full stadiums enjoying what so far has been an extremely exciting tournament.

Photo credit: 1xtra on Flickr, via the Pitch Invasion photo pool.

Photo credit: oceansunfish on Flickr, via the Pitch Invasion photo pool.

The gentleman in pink is a popular comedian in Ghana, on his way to the opening ceremony at the African Cup of Nations. Photo by Oluniyi David Ajao, via the Pitch Invasion photo pool.