This Time for Africa?

How could a cockerel eat a lion? That’s impossible!
—El-Hadji Diouf

WELL BEFORE SENEGAL’S BAD BOY STRIKER and World Cup hero of 2002, El-Hadji Diouf, flexed with the wonderfully sly line that could easily pass for an African proverb, the story of Africa’s confi­dence to mix with the best on the big stage began a good 4,500 km east of Senegal, in Cameroon. To be more precise, the first contagious dose of confidence emerged from inside the very seat of Cameroonian power, the president’s palace in Yaoun­dé. This was in 1989, six months before the World Cup in Italy.

Perhaps no one will ever know if Cameroon President Paul Biya actually watched the already-retired Roger Milla play in an obscure charity match or if he only heard about it from some of his football-loving yes-men, but it has been verified that Biya did in fact pick up the presidential telephone himself one evening and make exactly two calls. The first was to Milla, asking him to come out of retire­ment, and the other to Cameroon’s football association, informing them to include a 38-year-old man in their squad to Italia 90.

Fables of rulers or quasi-dictators using their influence to pick sports teams seldom end well, but this was the great exception. Not only did Biya change the life of a footballer well past his prime but those two calls altered the course of how an entire continent ap­proached the game. By the end of Italia 90, any African kicking a ball didn’t just want to play like Milla, he wanted to be like him; perhaps break into a celebratory dance like him too. Not bad for a man who didn’t start a single game for the Indomitable Lions during the cam­paign, but almost always had his say in how those matches finished.

By the time Milla came off the bench at the San Siro in Mi­lan for the opening game of the World Cup against the defend­ing champions, Diego Maradona’s Argentina, his countryman François Omam-Biyik had already scored what would be the winning goal. But Milla helped shore up the confidence of a Cameroon side reduced to nine men and take them over the line. Against Romania in the next match, substitute Milla would do a lot more—he came on after an hour and scored both of Cam­eroon’s goals in a 2:1 win that would make the pre-tournament, 500-to-1 outsiders top Group B and enter the knockouts.

Lying in wait at the Round-of-16 stage were Colombia, a team riding a wave of confidence thanks to their eccentric goalie, René Higuita. Higuita was very much a pioneer in redefining the role of the goalkeeper, but super-sub Milla couldn’t have cared less for reputations. Deep into extra time, the No 9 leapt over a diving de­fender and hoofed the ball past Higuita’s shoulder. It was the first of his two goals in the space of two minutes, the next snatched from sweeper-keeper Higuita’s feet and rolled into the back of the net. As Higuita hid his face in shame, Milla ran to the corner post and gyrated his hips to a phantom song.

Milla couldn’t have guessed then that every single African goal-scorer in future World Cups would unleash their moves by corner flags. Or that this particular celebration would be remembered even more than his role in the quarter-final against England. He didn’t score, but did win the penalty for the first goal and later create the silken assist for Cameroon’s second goal in their gut-wrenching 2:3 loss in the dregs of extra time. But Milla had done enough; enough to immediately make FIFA increase Africa’s quota of teams for the next World Cup; and enough to inspire a football revolution in Africa.

Back home in Cameroon, a 10-year-old boy named Samuel Eto’o started referring to himself as the “Next Milla”. The name soon forced the reputation. Eto’o retired as not only Cameroon’s all-time leading goal-scorer but he left behind a legacy of being one of the greatest strikers in European club football, winning back-to-back Champions League titles with Barcelona and Inter Milan. Today, at 41, he is the president of Cameroon’s football fed­eration, responsible not only for picking his country’s squad for Qatar 2022, but also for this bold prediction: Cameroon winning this World Cup by beating fellow Africans, Morocco, in the final.

“As the years have gone by, African teams have been acquiring more and more experience, and I think they are ready to win this most beautiful football competition,” said Eto’o and the trolls promptly sharpened their knives online (he even had Senegal losing in the semi-final, which makes three of his last-four teams African). But even if Eto’o’s vision is to be taken with a pinch of salt—given the office from which he made the prediction—is it such a ludicrous notion to imagine an African team hoisting the trophy at Lusail Stadium on December 18? For one, this is a World Cup with no clear favourites and two, players from Africa play starring roles in most of the top clubs all across Europe.

Even Aliou Cissé, the man nicknamed “El Tactico” for strategic genius and a far better judge of African football’s ground realities than Eto’o, believes Qatar could well be the promised land for an African side. Cissé, captain of Senegal when they became the next African team after Milla’s Cameroon to make the quarter-finals of a World Cup in 2002 and current head-coach who recently led his country to their first continental title, was asked by the New York Times if a team from his continent (there are five African sides in Qatar’s main draw—Senegal, Cameroon, Ghana, Morocco and Tunisia) could go all the way. In reply, Cissé asked: “Why not us?”

These were the very words that El-Hadji Diouf, Cisse’s team­mate and winger in the 2002 edition, claims to have spoken aloud to his teammates when he saw whom World Cup debutants Sen­egal had to face in their opening match, defending champions France. “We would say to each other, ‘If Roger Milla and Cameroon can do it, then why not us? Lads, we can do this!’ Because we owed it to ourselves to create a bit of African and World Cup history,” Di­ouf told FIFA.com, on the 20th anniversary of an unexpected win.

Exactly 12 years after Cameroon had upset the incumbent champions in the World Cup opener, Senegal matched the effect and scoreline in Seoul. The Teranga Lions had roared past the men wearing the Gallic Rooster (France’s national symbol) shirts. “Ac­cording to the French papers, they were going to win 8-0,” Diouf remembered. So, after Senegal won he reminded others what he had said before the match in the dressing room: “I said, ‘Hey, lads, we are lions, after all, and they are cockerel.’”

This defeat would prove so grave for Zinedine Zidane’s France that they would finish last in the group and exit in the first round, even as Cissé’s Senegal proceeded all the way to the quarter-finals where they lost during extra time to Turkey. But Diouf often likes to have the last word, so he has gone on the record to declare: “You can say what you like, but Senegal’s win over France is the greatest victory the tournament has ever seen.” Even if he meant it from an African perspective, fellow West Africans, Ghana, would never agree with Diouf’s sentiment.

At South Africa 2010, the first World Cup in Africa, Ghana were the only African nation left when the group stage ended. The Black Stars rode on the magnificent skills of their striker Asamoah Gyan (who is now the leading goal-scorer in World Cups for Africa with six, one more than Milla) to reach the quar­ters, but had Gyan not missed a penalty in the dying minutes of that match in Soccer City against Uruguay, they would have been the first African semi-finalists.

Ghana. Senegal. Cameroon. All sub-Saharan nations with great footballing pedigree; all former World Cup quarter-finalists; and all presently in the main draw of Qatar, waiting to take the next step or two. The smart money to do so, at least on paper, has got to be on Cissé’s Senegal. And a look at their squad for Qatar tells you why; incredibly, not one of the chosen 26 plays club football in Senegal, or anywhere in Africa for that matter. Instead, all of them are embedded in the upper echelons of global European clubs.

Senegal captain and centre-back Kalidou Koulibaly plays for Chelsea, as does the goalie Édouard Mendy. Their midfield is built on the talents of Nottingham Forest’s Cheikhou Kouyaté, Everton’s Idrissa Gueye, Tottenham’s Pape Matar Sarr, all of them supplying the ball ahead to Watford forward Ismaïla Sarr and, of course, their finest star, Bayern Munich’s Sadio Mané.

Such an ensemble of starpower in an African team is not rare any­more, and captain Koulibaly knows it. “I don’t know about the other African teams, but as captain of Senegal, we are not going to Qatar to only reach the normal ceiling of Africa, which is the quarterfinals,” he told Al Jazeera. “I believe we can compete for the trophy like the other countries from different continents. Senegal is going to Qatar with the ambition to win.”

CameroonFIFA World Cup: Qatar 2022GhanaSenegal