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Left Wing | 18 January 2006

Abidjan, Ivory Coast | The Jules Rimet World Cup trophy has been touring Africa, and the Times of London has tagged along. Fortunately, Owen Slot beats his own path through Angola, Ivory Coast, Togo and Ghana—the continent's new entries in the 2006 finals—for a five-part series, which began Monday in the newspaper's weekly football supplement, The Game. Immediately, the disconnect between prodigious talent and lack of infrastructure becomes apparent. Kolo Touré of Arsenal and Côte d'Ivoire learned on a bare patch in the Adjamé slum quarter, and while it may seem as if everything worked out in the end, Slot adds in a later story that Touré's success "is the cause of a massive social problem." Namely, some 300 football "academies" have sprung up in Abidjan, although few, if any, provide the education from which Touré and others benefited at Académie ASEC MimoSifcom. Instead, parents are bilked of limited funds or, if their progeny do succeed in finding places with small European clubs, their earnings do not make it back to African shores, but stay in agents' pockets.

Slot picks up on other particulars of African football: that the main phone line for the Togolese football federation does not work. Angola's national stadium, on which construction started in 1977, is still unfinished. Uganda's leading club, SC Villa, has signed a deal to supply maize and rice to the World Food Program to boost finances. And Slot speaks at length to Pascal Théault, director of the Abidjan ASEC academy, about Théault's discovery of Moussa Guindou, a teenage player originally from Mali. Guindou's delight at joining the academy and, for the first time, handling a writing implement led to his running between two chalkboards "furiously scribbling" for 20 minutes. "I tremble when I tell people about Guindou," says Théault. "My life has changed since I came to work in Abidjan. I thought I knew everything in football, but I didn't know about football and real life."

Jeddah, Saudi Arabia | Following evening prayers, Saudi Arabia and Sweden played a friendly match tonight with historic implications: for the first time, and after pressure from Swedish authorities, women were allowed to attend. The normally rigid gender separation in public was relaxed a bit for female Swedish supporters. "They will be allowed to watch the game but they will not be allowed to mingle with the Saudi crowd," said Saudi league director Faisal Abd al-Hadi. According to the author of Web log "Saudi Jeans," Swedish authorities had been told that anyone, including Saudi women, would be welcome at Prince Abdullah al-Faisal Stadium. "I really suspect this," writes this blogger. "I'm afraid that Saudis told [the] Swedish embassy such [a] thing because they are sure no Saudi woman would dare to show up at the stadium."

Manchester, England | If Steven Spielberg had thought longer about the title for his latest blockbuster—or if he had spent more time in the north of England—he might not have chosen Munich. "[I]n this country," writes Brian Viner of The Independent, "the word Munich has a prior claim on popular sentiment, relating more than anything to the fatal injuries sustained by eight Manchester United footballers and 15 others in 54 disastrous seconds at the end of a runway at Munich Riem Airport, on 6 February 1958." Of more significance, though, Viner—writing before Sunday's derby between Manchester City and United—calls for an end to the grisly mocking of United players and supporters as "Munichs." Manchester City joined the call in an open letter to fans: "What happened that day transcends football. It transcends rivalry. Death is not a joke; loss is not a way to goad your rivals." A BBC1 drama concerning the crash, "Surviving Disaster: Munich Air Crash," aired last week.

Page last updated on Thursday, January 19, 2006 22:39 -0500 GMT.