Settling into tepid beers and a winter’s warm dusk, it only took twenty minutes for South Africa to score.  The fan park erupted.  It was mass paroxysms of joy: leaping, dancing, hugging, and vuvuzelas of all shapes and sizes.  Then, with the game beginning again, our new friends turned to us and screamed in exclamation: “CAN YOU FEEL IT!  IT IS HERE!”

“Feel it!  It is here!”  With each word carefully enunciated, that catch-phrase was everywhere around South Africa 2010.  It was on TV, on the radio, in advertisements, on street banners, incorporated with concerts and stage shows.  It was, as far as I know, a marketing slogan promoted by either the South African Broadcasting Corporation or Brand South Africa to generate enthusiasm for the tournament—so my initial response was to think there was something inauthentic to its parroting.  At least that’s what I thought rationally, intellectually.  Then South Africa scored a second goal on an inchoate France team, and that Hammanskraal fan park erupted anew.  I suddenly realized that despite my intellectual resistance to uncritical branding—yes: I could feel it.

The beauty and the torture of soccer fandom, I came to appreciate during South Africa 2010, is the way the game simultaneously titillates very different parts of the mind.  The rational and the irrational.  The cognitive and the affective.  The intellectual and the emotional.  I loved this World Cup because it allowed me to try and think hard about globalization, culture, urbanity, inequality, nationalism, identity, sports in society, and many other incarnate ideas that have fascinated me at least since I first travelled through South Africa nearly 15 years ago on my way to two years in Peace Corps Malawi.  But I also loved this World Cup because it allowed me to scream from the bellows of my soul when a ball crossed a line in the grass.

This not-particularly-profound realization has been banging at me in this post-World Cup lull as I reflect back on my all too brief trip to South Africa for the group stage.  Two memories stand out.

One was a day touring Johannesburg with a kind stranger who had stumbled upon one of my pre-World Cup posts and was provoked by my surprise “at how little interest there seems to be in the real soccer experiences, and ‘normal’ daily experiences, of 47 million South Africans who somehow manage—as most of us do—to muddle through.”  The idea of us all ‘muddling through’ struck him as funny, and he offered to show me what he could: I rode three mini-bus taxis to make my way from Pretoria to Sandton, where he picked me up at the mall in his Land Rover (he’d never tried the mini-bus taxis himself, and found it quite amusing that I’d figured the route out).

A many generation South African of Indian descent, an engineer / IT professional who used his vacation time to go off-roading, he was about my age—apartheid ended when he was in secondary school, and he became one of the first students to integrate a prestigious (white) public school in Durban.  But he was more interested in talking about soccer, music, economics, cars, his skateboarding phase complete with dyed blue hair, and his daughter.

At the risk of sounding like a stereotype, she was a vivid emblem of the “new South Africa”—her mother of Afrikaner descent, her father a Muslim, herself an angelic four year old with impeccable manners and grace.  As the father, the daughter, and I toured around downtown Johannesburg—partially just to prove that we could—he talked about the pleasure and pride of having attended South Africa’s opening World Cup game (his wife had never before been to a soccer game, and was a bit surprised to learn that unlike rugby it was legal to make a forward pass), about having experienced more racism on trips to the US than when living in South Africa, and about the ubiquitous question for professional-class South Africans: should he consider looking for greener pastures abroad?  For me the very idea of the day, the confluence of stories, questions, meanings, histories, and identities within a coincidental meeting spurred by a soccer tournament, engaged all the intellectual faculties I ever try to exercise.

Several days later it was my emotion’s turn, sitting in the stands at Loftus Versfeld waiting out an increasingly tense 90 minutes between the US and Algeria.  I had bought the tickets through the US Supporters Club, and found myself amidst the American hard-cores: fans in red, white, and blue body suits and Uncle Sam tuxedos.  I’ve never been a particular fan of Landon Donovan, thinking he got too much too easily in his career, but when he stroked that ball into that net 50 yards from my seat I felt a moment of sheer, irrational ecstasy.  Shrieking.  Fist-pumping.  Shaking.  There would be time later to reflect on whether I was swept up in jingoism, whether my subjectivity had fallen victim to corporate sponsored bread and circus, whether I was experiencing reaction-formation to the anomie I feel in most of my life.  At that moment I found myself trembling with unknown joy under a giant American flag unfurling over my head, watching through blurry eyes while strangers hugged as if meeting family members they thought they’d never see again.  It was, as the kids say, raw.

I’m not sure whether I should be proud of these reactions.  My fascination with the lives of others sometimes feels voyeuristic, my joy at watching a ball cross a line often feels misplaced.  But I do know these things are why I am a soccer fan—for me the game is a perfect place for my intellect and my emotions to reach a symbiosis.

It all reminds me that while Freud was not right about many things, he was right that the human mind is fundamentally conflicted.  We are conflicted between intellect and emotion, between prudence and pleasure, between id impulses and superego strictures.  The challenge is not to eliminate those conflicts, but to find ways of negotiating between them in reasonably healthy ways.  Following soccer mostly works for me.

In that sense South Africa 2010 was a personal fandom apotheosis.  It may not have produced the most entertaining soccer, it may not have been the most prudent use of funds for a country facing daunting inequalities, African teams may not have availed themselves of anything like a home continent advantage, South Africa may still be balancing deep internal divisions, but such limitations are only ledger marks in the fascinating and ongoing negotiations of sports and society.  They are counterbalanced by other marks such as the elegance and symbolism in the performances of teams such as Ghana and Germany, the architectural inspirations of stadiums including Soccer City and Moses Mabhida, the clarity with which this World Cup sent the message that Africa can manage the most lofty of challenges, and the fact that South Africa is a country of nearly infinite vibrancy, talent, and potential.

Feeling comfortable with such potentially conflicting marks was subtly endorsed and illuminated for me by a variety of local commentators I read while in South Africa.  Several journalists noted that the nature of life in South Africa, the legacies of apartheid and the reality of inequality, promotes a degree of comfort with paradox and contradiction (explaining, for example, why many South Africans felt no hypocrisy in supporting both Bafana Bafana and Ghana, or Germany, or Brazil, or whoever).  South African author Mark Gevisser went one step further in a recent Guardian essay: “Indeed, there is a manic-depressive streak to the South African psyche; an after-effect, perhaps, of having once been so favoured after the “Mandela Miracle” transition to democracy. If we are not “the Rainbow Nation” – or the successful hosts of the first African mega-event – then we are another African failed state; Zimbabwe-in-waiting.”  But Gevisser himself is cautiously optimistic: “the power of a grand national pageant [such as the World Cup] is its myth-making potential: whether we were in cars on the way down to Bloemfontein or dancing on the side of the highway, we will tell our children and grandchildren about it and it will become the measure, for years to come, of the Rainbow Nation we imagined we were bringing into being in 1994.”

In fact, in defining fandom as born of psychological contradiction and conflict I find it interesting to look back at my own patterns of writing here on Pitch Invasion around South Africa 2010.  After offering tongue-in-cheek predictions about who would advance from each group ‘if there were any justice in the world’ (a method that resulted in me correctly picking 8 of the 16 teams that would advance—exactly what you’d predict on random chance, furthering my suggestion that there is rarely any justice in the world.), the last post I wrote before I left was full of sentimental defensiveness.  I was bothered by the fear and pessimism surrounding much pre-World Cup media, and offered alternative media sources that I hoped might be more sophisticated and real.  Then while in South Africa, in an effort to find a niche, I wrote about topics such as my unease with the security apparatus around the stadiums, about xenophobia, about the under-development of grass-roots soccer, about what Franz Fanon might think of Soccer City.  In other words, I mostly wrote things that were intellectually critical.

I tried to focus any criticisms on global forces victimizing South Africa, but it just became much easier to offer pseudo-intellectual deconstructions rather than emotional effusions.  The irony is that while it may not have come across in my posts, I loved every single day of my trip to South Africa.  Loved it.

So while some of what I wrote was about xenophobia and inequality and misunderstandings, I want to go on record stating that in my mind South Africa 2010 was a grand success.  It was a tournament that allowed us to intellectually engage with South Africa as a place that matters in global society, and it was a tournament that allowed us to emotionally immerse ourselves in a beautiful game.  It was a tournament that allowed me, ever so briefly, to love Landon Donovan with all my heart.  It was a tournament that made me happy to parrot a marketing slogan for the sake of a brand: FEEL IT!

Tessema’s remarkable story intertwined with deconolisation, the fight against apartheid in South Africa and the battle for respect and opportunities for African soccer in the face of a Eurocentric FIFA.

Tessema, born in 1921, was a hell of a player (scorer of 318 goals in 365 games for Saint-George SA) and a coach: in the latter role, he took his native Ethiopia to their sole major tournament triumph, at the 1962 Africa Cup of Nations.

But it was as an administrator that Tessema left his true imprint on the sport. In 1953, four African nations attended the FIFA Congress for the first time: Egypt, Ethiopia, South Africa and Sudan. At first, FIFA resisted African claims for representation on its Executive Committee; in The Ball Is Round, David Goldblatt says “Initially their efforts had been brusquely rebuffed by FIFA’s European majority on the grounds of a barely disguised and contemptuous racism.”

The African nations, though, found support from the Soviet bloc and South America, and it gained representation on the Executive Committee in 1954 (Engineer Abdelaziz Abdallah Salem of Egypt became the first African to sit on it) and earned the right to set up its own FIFA Confederation.

That confederation, the Confédération Africaine de Football (CAF), was formed at a Constitutional Assembly on 8 February 1957. Tessema (still a player in his mid thirties) was one of the delegates there representing the four countries present: Egypt, Ethiopia, Sudan and South Africa. The Statutes of CAF were drawn from those proposed by Tessema and Sudan’s Abdel Rahim Shaddad. Tessema was voted onto the body’s first executive committee, with Engineer Salem the first president.

Immediately, CAF faced a major crisis, with founding member South Africa under its Apartheid regime stating it could only take either an all-white or all-black team to the first Africa Cup of Nations to be held that year; CAF excluded them from the competition and threw South Africa out of CAF altogether in 1961. It was, according to fellow founding CAF delegate Abdel Halim Mohammed, Tessema’s “firm stand” at CAF meetings that South Africa must field a mixed team that had ensured the confederation was the first international organisation to isolate South Africa in the sporting world.

Tessema at the 1958 World Cup in Sweden

In 1963, Tessema became the Vice-President of CAF, and led the move to form Africa’s first continental club competition, the African Cup for Champion Clubs. In 1966, Tessema (fluent in French, English and Spanish) joined FIFA’s Executive Committee, at a critical moment for African football in FIFA’s halls of power. As its membership grew, so would — theoretically — its voting power in the halls of FIFA.

FIFA operated under (and still does) a one member, one vote policy at the FIFA Congress: meaning for every African country taken in, the power of its original European members was weakened. Sir Stanley Rous, head of FIFA, put bluntly the fears this brought up for the existing powerbase:

Many people are convinced that it is unrealistic, for example, that a country like England, where the game started and was first organised, or that experienced countries like Italy and France, who have been pillars of FIFA and influential in its problems and in world football affairs for so many years, should have no more than equal voting rights with any of the newly created countries of Africa and Asia.

Writing in the 1980s as that sentiment lingered on, Tessema had an eloquent response for this:

Although we acknowledge the role played by certain continents in the creation of FIFA, its development and their moral, material and financial contributions, we estimate that democratic rule dictates that all rights and duties that form an international organisation should be the same for all. This is why in the framework of legitimacy, and by following a process consistent with the interests of world football and its unity, a progressive equilibrium of the representation in the heart of FIFA and its competition is required.

CAF’s rise in the 1960s, meanwhile, was tightly linked to the wave of pan-Africanism sweeping the continent. National pride became linked to joining the African community of football in membership of CAF. Politics and football were seen as reflections of each other. And this led to an almighty fight between CAF and FIFA over both politics and football as African demands for more power within FIFA reflected the demands of decolonisation politically in the international arena. And Tessema’s fight against racial discrimination in the African continent became a part of this struggle.

It was at this time that CAF fought its battle with FIFA to gain an automatic place for Africa at the World Cup finals. CAF had 30 members by the mid-1960s, but only half a place at the World Cup finals: the winner of the Africa Cup of Nations faced a playoff against the Asian Cup winner to qualify. The costs of competing and the low likelihood of qualification for the World Cup meant many poorer countries did not enter CAF’s premier competition. And this in turn, in a clever sleight of hand by FIFA’s existing European and South American powerbase, threatened their use of their growing membership in FIFA’s sovereign Congress: FIFA decreed that “National Associations which do not take part in two successive World Cups or Olympic tournaments will be stripped of their right to vote at the Congress until they fulfil their obligations in this respect.”

Tessema and CAF’s leadership, with the global voice of Ghana’s first post-independence leader Kwame Nkrumah supporting them, announced a boycott of the 1966 World Cup unless Africa received one full place at future finals. FIFA’s response was to fine the threadbare boycotting nations 5,000 Swiss Francs each. Tessema wrote a furious letter to FIFA pointing out the absurdity that only one World Cup place was awarded to a total of 65 nations in the continents outside Europe and South America. FIFA relented, and Africa was awarded a full place for the 1970 World Cup finals (Morocco becoming the first African nation to play in the World Cup since Egypt in 1934). This was to the dismay of Brain Glanville (still a World Soccer columnist today), who wrote that “It is quite true that football in countries such as the U.S.A. and Ethiopia would be encouraged by World Cup participation, but only at the expense of cheapening the World Cup, a pretty heavy price to pay when this tournament is, or should be, the very zenith of the International game.”

Not coincidentally, politics as well as World Cup positions were dividing CAF and FIFA: led by Sir Stanley Rous, FIFA secretly supported the establishment of a new, second Confederation in Africa, the Southern African Confederation, a South African puppet clearly aimed at giving the Apartheid regime legitimacy, as South Africa had been suspended from FIFA against Rous’ wishes in 1961 under pressure from CAF (FIFA’s Executive Committee had lifted the suspension in 1963 following a visit by Rous to South Africa, only for the FIFA Congress to reimpose it the next year). Led by Tessema, CAF’s delegation threatened to walk out on the FIFA Congress in London in 1966 if FIFA’s leadership backed the reinstatement of South Africa again.

Meanwhile, internally in CAF, Tessema continued to modernise the organisation and expand its role in Africa, even as he faced challenges in a power struggle for CAF leadership.  He led a key Organising Committee that led to a restructuring of CAF in 1972, and the same year was elected as its president (a position he would hold until his death in 1987). The continent’s first youth competition was soon instituted, as was an African Cup Winners’ Cup tournament. CAF’s revenue grew, with television and marketing rights to the Africa Cup of Nations profitably sold for the first time in 1982, and it became less reliant on outside support and focused on continental development of the game.

Tessema had worked hard to grow Africa’s standing globally, particularly in the face of intransigent European leadership at FIFA. One key strategy he employed was to cement ties between the African continent and South America, with an African select team appearing at the 1972 Brazilian Independence Cup, for example. Tessema then played a key role in the victory of Brazilian João Havelange over the reactionary Sir Stanley Rous for the FIFA presidency in 1974: for all his later corrupt dealings, that victory by Havelange was crucial for orientating FIFA beyond its previous Northern European pole and led to unprecedented opportunities for African teams.

Notably, rather than Havelange manipulating CAF to gain their support to defeat Rous, it was Tessema who had used the leverage of the forthcoming 1974 election to force Havelange to withdraw Brazil from a 1973 multi-sports festival in South Africa aimed at giving the Apartheid regime international credibility. As Rous himself wrote: “The Brazilians withdrew, I am told on good authority, because Tessema, the president of the African confederation threatened that Mr Havelange would lose the support of the African associations in his fight against me for the presidency of FIFA.”

Paul Darby, in his excellent book Africa, football, and FIFA: politics, colonialism, and resistance, explains Tessema’s sophisticated strategy:

The fact that Tessema was in a position to threaten the withdrawal of African support for Havelange’s presidential challenge illustrates that CAF was not only gaining confidence to assert itself within world football politics but was also beginning to recognise the potential that its voting powers offered the African continent. Indeed, it is clear from African accounts of the 1974 FIFA Congress . . . that the African nations did not see themselves merely as pawns in a power struggle for the control of FIFA. Instead, they saw Havelange as the means through which to achieve a realignment of the distribution of power and privilege within world football which would more adequately reflect their growing stature.

At the same FIFA Congress, a motion by Tessema required the automatic expulsion from FIFA of any country that practiced ‘ethnic, racial and/or religious discrimination in its territory’, thus ending — to the chagrin of Rous — the ambiguity that surrounded South Africa: Rous was still pushing to end their suspension. But Havelange’s victory ended that hope, and under his leadership, South Africa were expelled from FIFA in 1976.

In 1978, the number of World Cup places Africa should hold came up again at FIFA, but this time, it was an easier fight for Tessema to win some numerical justice for Africa: their number of places doubled at the 1982 World Cup to two.

As the years went on, some began to question Tessema’s long tenure, and the divisions between African nations hampered the realisation of the Pan-African dreams of the 1960s. But Tessema remained a force for the good of the sport until his death in 1987: he was a lone voice at keeping alcohol and tobacco sponsorship out of African football, and he warned against the growing trend of young African talent leaving for European shores. He spelled out the latter concern clearly in the 1980s:

African football must make a choice! Either we keep our players in Africa with the will power of reaching one day the top of the international competitions and restore African people a dignity that they long for; or we let our best elements leave their countries, thus remaining the eternal suppliers of raw material to the premium countries, and renounce, in this way, to any ambition. When the rich countries take away from us, also by naturalisation, our best elements, we should not expect any chivalrous behaviour on their part to help African football.

One wonders what Tessema would make of African football today: a World Cup host, with numerous world stars, but still struggling for domestic development in the game.

Shortly before his death, Tessema, according to Darby, “reiterated his belief that CAF must continue to struggle to ensure that Africa procured within FIFA, ‘the place which is ours by right and which would allow us to play the role of a real respected partner and not that of a puppet’.”

Few have done more to propel Africa towards its proper place in world soccer than Tessema.

References: Darby, Africa, Football, and FIFA; Goldblatt, The Ball Is Round; Le Sueur, The Decolonization Reader; Mangan, Europe, sport, world: shaping global societies; Rous, Football Worlds. Photos courtesy of The Tessemas website.

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

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

Moses Mabhida Stadium, Durban, ahead of the Spain vs. Germany 2010 World Cup semi-final.

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

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

The other side of globalization, however, is the possibility that hyper-connectivity and piqued curiosity can create opportunities for diverse voices to propagate.  The possibility of stumbling on African perspectives that enlarge and enrich the conversation about soccer and society should be one of the great opportunities of this World Cup.

And while the sanitized big media version of the World Cup (and of globalization) seems to have maintained its hegemony in recent weeks, there are hints of the alternative possibility.  I’ve been interested, for example, to follow dispatches from well-known African writers and intellectuals dispersed across the continent during the World Cup for a project called Pilgrimages, or to read stories from aspiring writers in South Africa exploring the realities of their daily lives through Global Girl Media (as discussed by The People’s Game).  In addition, during my final few days in South Africa last week I was lucky enough to stumble upon “Twenty Ten: African Media on the Road to 2010 (and beyond).”

Described as a joint initiative by World Press Photo, Free Voice, Africa Media Online and lokaalmondiaal, with funding from the Nationale Postcode Loterij in the Netherlands,

“The Twenty Ten project focuses on strengthening the journalistic skills of African reporters in the fields of the printed word, photography, radio, internet and television.  The intentions are to encourage these media professionals to creatively produce reports about football in Africa and to help sell their products throughout the world.  Twenty Ten also aims to create an opportunity for the results of the project to have lasting effects on African journalism far beyond the World Cup.”

I was tipped off to the project by a fellow Oregonian now living in Amsterdam and working as the web editor for Twenty Ten.  She introduced me to some of the young African journalists and senior media professionals being sponsored to work in South Africa during the World Cup, and offered me a copy of the book that makes up one part of their work (a book with selections from pre-World Cup journalism workshops around the continent, available from KIT Publishers in Amsterdam).  They explained that in addition to the book they’ve been working collaboratively to produce journalism available on the web for reading or for purchase by larger media outlets.  While the original intention was to focus on presenting positive visions of Africa, something they do well in many pieces, the reality of South Africa 2010 has also led them to offer local perspectives on critical issues such as FIFA’s treatment of low-level workers and unemployment in South Africa.

The value of having young and promising African journalists engage with this World Cup is evident in the alternative lenses work from the Twenty Ten project offers on familiar issues.  On the diversity of Bafana Bafana, for example, Ugandan journalist Joseph Opio moves beyond the familiar and artificial black/white dichotomy to consider the integration of South Africa’s large population of Indian descent.  Or on prostitution, for another example, Nikki Rixon offers “A day in the life of a sex worker” as a powerful and humanizing photo-essay.

Likewise, the book (fully titled Africa United: The Road to Twenty Ten) offers intriguing local perspectives on stories that would likely be somewhat familiar to followers of African soccer: the role of Didier Drogba and the Cote D’Ivoire national team in national reconciliation (by Selay Marius Kouassi), the tragic plane crash that killed most of the Zambian national team on its way to a World Cup qualifier in 1993 (by Kennedy Gondwe), the inspiration provided by George Weah to war-torn Liberia (by Emmanuel Geeza Williams).  But particularly when the stories are told by journalists from the country at hand (which is not always the case in the book), the pieces offer rich local insights: on Cote D’Ivoire we hear from observers as diverse as Drogba’s mother and government ministers, on Zambia we get the contemporary story of widows struggling to support their families since promises of endowments in tribute to the crash victims have been unfulfilled, from Liberia we learn what it was like to listen to Cameroon’s legendary 1990 World Cup victories on the radio while living in a refugee camp.

There are also stories of African soccer I hadn’t heard before; I particularly enjoyed reading Joe Opio on how Idi Amin, for all the problems he caused in Uganda, managed to convince Pelé to make a three day visit in 1976 that enthralled the nation:

“The Pelé visit is remembered as a landmark event by every Ugandan with a passing interest in football.   But it isn’t the sole reason Amin, despite such an infamous contribution to humanity, holds a treasured place in the hearts of football lovers in Uganda.  Come to think of it, it isn’t even the crowning legacy of Amin’s patronage of local football.  In a success-starved nation, Amin’s reign, for all its faults, is remembered among fans as a golden era of sorts.”

Who knew?

The book is also particularly strong in its photojournalism.  The series by Joseph Moura, for example, on ‘Mother Malou,’ identified as “the first woman referee from Congo to make it to the international level,” makes for a fascinating picture of a parallel Congo where strong women dictate male worlds.  Similarly,  the series by Simone Scholtz titled “Transformations,” showing Ghanaian fans before and after painting themselves with national colors and a black star, offers evocative images of fandom as simultaneously exotic and familiar.

The work does have its limitations—the journalists are often young professionals and they start with many different languages—but the project as a whole strikes me as the type of thing we should hope for more of from this first World Cup on African soil.  “Just imagine,” suggest the book’s editors Stefan Verwer, Marc Broere and Chris de Bode, “what it would mean to the people in Africa if an African team won the World Cup.”  On the field, unfortunately, all we can do for now is to just imagine.  Off the field, hopefully, amidst the limitations and possibilities of globalization we can learn to expect more.

Once a teammate of Pele’s with the New York Cosmos, Sono — and several brilliant contemporaries — never got the chance to play for their country because of the international sports boycott.

“I’m not being cocky,” he said in an interview Thursday. “We would have definitely won the World Cup.”

Well, perhaps. The world champion Argentines were pretty good in 1978. So were the Italians in 1982.

Nonetheless, Sono was part of a generation of South African stars who played abroad, primarily in the North American Soccer league, during the 1970s and ’80s. They included both white and black players — among them Steve Wegerle, Neill Roberts, Webster Lichaba and the heralded midfielder Ace Ntsoelengoe — who might have qualified for the 1982 World Cup.

“We could have made a big difference in the world,” Sono mused. “But we cannot be sad.”

Andrew Guest wrote a superb essay here a few months ago on this connection between the NASL and South African soccer, further explaining how these South African stars ended up in the NASL and why it offered an important opportunity for these players denied them elsewhere:

In the 60’s and 70’s, at a time where complicated politics (including the injustices of apartheid) and subtle prejudices made it rare for African players to feature in European leagues, the entrepreneurial spirit of the NASL offered that most American of ideals: opportunity.

In turn, the South Africans parlayed that opportunity, along with what would seem to be a healthy dose of the NASL’s entrepreneurial spirit, into South African teams that in many ways helped set the stage for hosting the 2010 World Cup.  Though there are many examples, and many stories to be told, for now I’ll focus on two of the most prominent: Kaizer Motaung’s journey from being the 1968 NASL Rookie of the Year with the Atlanta Chiefs to fashioning Johannesburg’s Kaizer Chiefs into South Africa’s most popular club, and Jomo Sono’s journey from understudy to Pele with the New York Cosmos to a long spell cultivating the most talented players in South Africa through his club Jomo Cosmos and intermittent role as coach of Bafana Bafana.  Both men are South African icons and their success is mostly a story of South African talent, spirit, and creativity—but America also seems to have offered each a small spark.

I highly recommend reading both pieces.

Moses Mabhida Stadium, Durban, South Africa. Taken 19 June 2010, Netherlands-Japan, 2010 World Cup.

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

England pulled a goal back in the 37th minute when a short Lampard corner from the right was played to Gerrard who crossed into the box. Upson, atoning for his earlier error, rose highest above the Germany defence and with Neuer stranded, powered a header into the net. Meetings between these two sides often provide talking points and this one’s came 60 seconds later when Lampard’s shot from the edge of the box struck the underside of the crossbar and bounced down, with the referee ruling the ball had not crossed the goalline.

There is no mention that the ball clearly crossed the line, with the reader left to ponder on precisely where it bounced down and why the referee might have made such a ruling.

Then we have FIFA’s report on the Mexico-Argentina game, with a notable absence in the description of Tevez’s first goal:

Maradona’s side were hardly lacking in attacking menace themselves, however, and Lionel Messi soon embarked on one of his trademark elusive runs before attempting a chip over Oscar Perez that the Mexico keeper judged well. Messi’s hunt for a goal at South Africa 2010 continues, but it was not long before the Barcelona talisman played a key role as another of Argentina’s star forwards opened his tournament account.

Tevez might have thought his chance had gone when Perez raced out to block bravely at his feet, but Messi was quick-witted enough to return the ball towards goal, where the Manchester City striker was waiting to head home. Breaking the deadlock enabled Argentina to take a firm grip on proceedings, and within seven minutes that hold was strengthened as Mexico reached for the self-destruct button.

No mention that “where the Manchester City striker was waiting to head home” was in a clearly offside position, or the bizarre scenes that followed which might just have played into Mexico reaching for that “self-destruct button”.

What’s interesting isn’t so much the banal and blatant official spin here, but that due to a growing suspicion of FIFA, whitewashing accounts like these may only make matters worse for Sepp Blatter and company.

It’s fairly obvious that when referees make mistakes, the finger is going to be pointed at FIFA — and, of course, they are responsible for maintaining high standards of refereeing at the World Cup and in the world’s game. FIFA’s stubborn resistance to even adequately explore goal-line technology is only the most glaring example of failure in this regard.

Many, though, sniff corruption rather than incompetence. The second largest number of visitors that arrived at this site through entering keywords into a search engine today did so by typing “FIFA corruption” into Google (the first was “Pitch Invasion”). The last time that same search term spiked so high was on Friday, June 18th, the day the US played Slovenia: and, pace Henry Winter, that game also had a high-profile refereeing controversy that had many searching for answers via Google. I’m guessing this was indicative of a global trend.

FIFA’s footprint is more obvious to casual viewers of the World Cup than it ever has been, as part of their self-promotional branding of the tournament. Their name is splashed on the screen at the start of every instant replay on television: FIFA, right before we see the ball cross the line by half a mile, or Tevez standing two yards offside, or Dempsey standing onside.

And so we have FIFA trying to keep the lid on these mistakes by cutting out comments on its website mentioning such unfortunate incidents and clamping down especially hard on YouTube videos featuring those particular incidents, as well as the obvious spin in the match report examples above. As Robin Goldstein at Blind Taste detailed right after the U.S-Slovenia game:

As of this writing, of the 343 comments to have been approved by the moderators on FIFA.com’s “Have Your Say” discussion board about today’s controversial US-Slovenia 2-2 draw in World Cup competition, not one of them contains even a passing mention of the main topic of discussion of every article that has been written about the game: the fact that referee Koman Coulibaly disallowed the third US goal for reasons that weren’t (and still aren’t) clear to players, fans, or television announcers.

Other soccer discussion boards, like the Washington Post’s Soccer Insider, were flooded with debate and discussion about the questionable call, which began almost immediately after it happened at about 16:40 GMT (the time zone used by FIFA.com). So were Twitter feeds (although at some point Twitter crashed, as it frequently has during the World Cup). The discussion over the controversy really exploded around the internet after the game ended at 16:51, and before long, USA’s tie with Slovenia already had more Google News blog hits (850) than Serbia’s upset of Germany (701).

But on FIFA.com, the silence about USA-Slovenia has been deafening. The latest comment to appear on the discussion board has a timestamp of 20:04. In the 193-minute span between the game’s end and the latest comment’s time stamp, only 24 squeaky-clean comments have been approved. For instance: “great fightback by the USA”; “this is the right result on the balance of play”; “way to go USA”; “the match was really exciting!”; “slovenia is the best team”; “USA are becoming a real nice team!”; and “Slovenia had a great chance to qualify in the next round!! But in the second half we were too defensive.”

By comparison, in that same span of time—193 minutes—after the end of Germany-Serbia (which ended today at 14:20), there were already 175 comments posted. That’s more than seven times as many.

FIFA’s efforts at massaging the conversation about the games will only drive people from using their official sources, erode their trust in them as an organisation, and feed conspiracy theories. As Goldstein puts it: “This doesn’t just undermine fans’ trust in FIFA; it also squanders an easy opportunity for the body that administers the world’s favorite sporting event to become a place where fans can share, discuss, and debate the things that they care most deeply about—thus engendering goodwill and helping to spread the good word about soccer.”

Even though we don’t have any inkling of any actual corruption in South Africa, FIFA is surely only engendering unnecessary further suspicion by such heavy-handed attempts to control the storylines.

We all saw the ball cross the line, Sepp, and we’re going to talk about it whether you like it or not.