Football and me: Part One

Most, if not all, of my friends are crazy about football. I like watching the same well enough, though I have never understood the off-side rule. But I get put off by all the brouhaha (when one’s die scores a goal, does one really have to stand up and wave one’s arms about and scream expletives?), and the racism with which players and supporters seem to be infested with, and the fact that the sport is contaminated by big money, much of it from some of the most unpleasant people in the world, specifically, Russian oligarchs and Arab despots. My father was a great football fan, an avid (but never rowdy) supporter of the London team West Ham. When I was around ten-years-old, our neighbours bought the game of Subbuteo. I’d better explain what this was, in case it no longer exists or never reached Lesotho. It comprised a small table on which was a model football pitch. The players were tiny plastic figures with a semi-spherical base; these were flocked with one’s forefinger to get them to move. My friends each bought themselves a team of players, which togged out in the colours of the real-life team they supported. I wanted to join in, so I asked my Dad to buy me a team as an advance birthday present. He happily agreed, as long as the team were West Ham, in claret and light blue shirts. “Glad to see, son,” he beamed, “that at last you’re getting into football. If only in a small way.” My mother giggled and quipped: “very small. Like the players are two inches tall.” A number of other memories follow. About twenty years ago I treated my semi-adopted son and great buddy Lekholoa Paul Bokaako to a holiday in the UK. We started out in London and on our first full day there, around noon, I grew weary playing the tourist guide and suggested we have a drink. We entered a pub that had just opened its doors for the day and found no other customers, just the barman, who was washing glasses from the night before. He was white, twenty-something, with green punk hair and studs through his nose and upper lip, and didn’t seem overjoyed to see us. We sat by a window and I gave Lekholoa a five pound note and asked him to go to the bar and get himself a drink and my usual glass of wine. “Why me?” “Because I’m not waiting on you hand and foot over the next two weeks. And it’d be a good idea for you to get conversational practice and to learn to use British currency. Starting now. What’s your problem?” “What if he doesn’t like me and insults me?” “Why should that happen?” “Well, maybe you never noticed, Chris, but I’m a black man.” “Oh, right, so you are, and he’s a punk. It won’t happen. And if it does, I’ll threaten to call the police and to complain to his manager.” Lekholoa took himself off to the bar and I didn’t see him for a good ten minutes. He and the barman were roaring with laughter, hurling mock insults at each other, hugging each other. Eventually I called out: “Lekholoa, I could do with my drink.” When he eventually came back with the drinks and my change I said: “looks like you’ve found a new friend.” “We were just swapping stories about our favourite teams.” And then, as if he was talking to the village idiot: “football teams. My new friend supports Millwall.” Around the same time I was invited to give a paper at an academic conference in Accra, Ghana. On a free afternoon I sat under a tree in the hotel garden, where a television had been installed so residents and other customers could watch football. I sat with my wine and watched an Africa Cup qualifier, Egypt playing Mali. Egypt was at the time a very strong team and the Malian team was (back in those days) practically unknown. Mali were, however, doing very well indeed and every time they scored those around me went wild. I said to the Ghanaian woman sitting nearby, “surely nearly everyone here is Ghanaian?” She nodded and I asked “why all the support for Mali?” “Because,” she explained, once again as if addressing some kind of half-wit, “Egypt is in North Africa, and Mali, like us, is West African.” Such is the cohesive and divisive power of the game. To be concluded