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Soccer in Africa

Posted on Apr 19, 2016. 0 comments

Soccer is the majority of the world’s favorite sport. There are facts to back this up according to Fifa there are 265 million players around the world , 5 million referee, and the last World Cup Final brought in a viewership of 26.5 million people crushing the previous number. Uganda that fact stands true as well as for the rest of the African nations. Soccer, or Football as the African nations call it, was brought to the continent more than 100 years ago by the European settlers. Soccer, as we said before, is a very popular sport world wide but the access to the game makes it extremely popular in the African nations. Soccer has no social economic borders; everyone can play from the wealthy to the very poor, all you need is a ball and four poles or rocks to portray goal boundaries.  Soccer is a way for the poor to get out of poverty in Africa. In many cases, some of the African stars that are in todays biggest leagues were found while playing pick-up games in small villages.

The other side of soccer in Africa is it brings a sense of, other wise very low, national pride. Everyone knows about the world cup, but for most African nations that is a far off dream. During the continental tournament every nation has a better chance to qualify for  the African Cup of Nations. This brings out some crazy visuals of packed stadiums to watch the home country play. Entire villages shut down for big national games. Uganda has only appeared in the African Cup of nations 5 times and has never qualified for the World Cup, but people still come out in droves to support the Cranes. This is the reality for many African countries who haven't had the international success as Ghana, Ivory Coast, and Egypt have had as of late. Still people in the other countries come out of the wood work to support Africa. That is typically not something you see in other parts of the world. Usually many Africans believe that soccer is what could propel them to the modern world so at the end of the day everyone stands together as “One African Nation”.  This fact was on display when the 2010 World Cup was held in South Africa.

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