AFCON curtains and musings

Thulaganyo Jankey | Tuesday February 20, 2024 06:00

So, most of my evenings were taken up by watching soccer. Long, boring, endless games of soccer. I watched the tournament spit and sputter like an engine that just got a good solid swig of water. How I watched right to the end has me baffled too. I know some thoroughly enjoyed the spectacle but I remain unconvinced.

I know a poor tournament when I see one and this one was a stinker. There’s obviously going to be a rush to spew the plaudits with not much brainpower generated before the flowers spring into action. Before you point your misfiring guns at me, let me explain how this didn’t push my pulse up. Previous tournaments were painted with pretty faces on the stands, which acted as a salve for the dour football out in the field. Usually this dimension is brought by the participation of Ethiopia. Everyone sat in front of their TVs to see the Ethiopian ladies who are naturally beautiful without any make-up powder tweaks.

Ethiopia became many people’s favourite team besides their nation even though if you were to ask them, they would not remember a single Ethiopian footballer’s name. I think CAF should as a rule make it compulsory that Ethiopia are a permanent fixture at AFCON without even participating in qualifiers.

Kids too young to speak spoke their first words when they saw the Ethiopian beauties. And for most of them, their first word was ‘Epopia’, which is Ethiopia in infant-speak. I believe this is why Ethiopia was never colonised. As the Europeans cut up the African cake for themselves there must have been a unanimous agreement not to colonise and enslave such beauty. The only thing that saved the tournament was the refereeing officials. Those much-hated officials just brought their A+ game. Will Smith once sang a song that went, ‘here comes the men in black, galaxy defenders’ and in a roundabout way he could have been talking about this year’s AFCON referees. Their officiating stood in stark contrast to the generally poor display of soccer on the field where the players seemed to view the white spherical thing as incidental.

The good thing which CAF must be lauded for was that the referee that etched his name in the infamy folklore by failing to interpret a watch and ending a game prematurely in the previous tournament was not there. I looked very hard and didn’t see him officiating. I suppose he has been sent back to elementary school to learn ‘The Clock’, something which most of us did in Standard Four. I mean, how could CAF have persisted with an adult who could not interpret a chronometer. As we await the tournament wrap-up write-up, we hope those in charge of that end of things stay off the St Louis Lager percentages and remove the rose-coloured glasses and report exactly what happened. Truth is, an intrusion in these reports especially if they are penned by those who have vested interests in the sport. In these reports reality is as welcome as a porcupine at a balloon party.

That is me dunking another truth bomb on them. I hope they listen.

(For comments, feedback and insults email inkspills1969@gmail.com) Thulaganyo Jankey is a Rapporteur and training consultant who runs his own training consultancy that provides training in BQA- accredited courses. His other services include registering consultancies with BQA and developing training courses. Contact him on 74447920 or email ultimaxtraining@gmail.com