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The World's Game
JUNE 2006
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The World's Game
This month 32 nations will compete for the World Cup of soccer, the "beautiful game" that unites and divides countries around the globe. To celebrate that we bring you excerpts from The Thinking Fan's Guide to the World Cup.
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By Sean Wilsey
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Photographs by Marco Anelli, Grazia Neri
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"Introduction" by Sean Wilsey
"IVORY COAST—The Way to Win Juju on the Field," by Paul Laity
"ENGLAND—Faded Glory: Taming the Hooligans," by Nick Hornby
"BRAZIL—Ballet with Ball: A Love Story," by John Lanchester
"COSTA RICA—Soccer Inc: Marketing Fanaticism," by Matthew Yeomans
"SPAIN—Morality Play: Soccer as Theater," by Robert Coover
"ANGOLA—A Greater Goal: Healing a War-Torn Land," by Henning Mankell
"ARGENTINA—Ode to Maradona: Falklands' Revenge," by Thomas Jones
"CROATIA—Group Therapy: A Nation is Born," by Courtney Angela Brkic
IVORY COAST
The Way to Win: Juju on the Field
By Paul Laity
The party began at ten to six. Ivory Coast had just qualified for the World Cup—for the first time ever. In an instant, the city of Abidjan was full of people and noise. Fans in tangerine and white and green poured onto the streets, drivers hooted their horns; loud zouglou music was playing, and pots and pans were joyously banged. The partygoers danced a new dance, the "Drogbacité," named in honor of the team's star striker, Didier Drogba: They mimed his feints, turns, and the unleashing of unstoppable shots. Others tried out the fouka-fouka, Drogba's trademark celebratory hip-swivel—a little piece of Ivoirian culture known to soccer fans everywhere. The maquis—open-air cafés, bars, and mini-nightclubs—stayed open all night serving "Drogbas," bottles of local beer, so called because of their size and potency. A number of the drinkers had "Les Éléphants" painted on their chests, the nickname of the national team: Elephants represent power and are said to be lucky, too—protected by a spell. The team had suffered its share of disappointments; finally, the name seemed appropriate. Excited fans announced that soccer could do more than any politician to put an end to the civil war.
Over the past six years, the Ivory Coast's southern-based regime has fomented hatred of immigrants and Muslims, yet many of the country's best soccer players are from Muslim and immigrant families, so the national team has become an irresistible symbol of unity. At the end of the Abidjan victory parade, the head of the Ivory Coast Football Federation addressed a plea to President Laurent Gbagbo: "The players have asked me to tell you that what they most want now is for our divided country to become one again. They want this victory to act as a catalyst for peace in Ivory Coast, to put an end to the conflict and to reunite its people. This success must bring us together." The party on the streets lasted another whole day.
President Gbagbo did his best to be identified with the conquering team. He talked of a rejuvenated nation and gave each of the players the equivalent of a knighthood and a swanky villa. But Henri Michel, the French coach of the Ivoirian soccer team, was notably absent from the celebration at President Gbagbo's residence. He was, presumably, an awkward reminder of the colonial legacy. The governmental sponsors of anti-French thinking in today's Ivory Coast face a difficulty when it comes to soccer, however. Of the first-choice players on the national team, many play on French teams during the regular season, and a number have lived in France most of their lives: Drogba left the Ivory Coast at the age of five to stay with an uncle and tells of a childhood watching European soccer on TV.
Gbagbo will choose to ignore the importance of France to Ivoirian soccer as long as Ivory Coast keeps winning, and he has loudly publicized the extent to which his government has financed the national team. But he is likely to distance himself from another form of assistance. In 1992, the only time apart from this year that Ivory Coast played in the final of the African Nations Cup, the sports minister enlisted a battalion of fétisheurs—juju men—to give the Ivoirian team a supernatural advantage against Ghana. The story goes that when the minister reneged on promises to pay the fétisheurs, they put a hex on the team, which suffered a ten-year run of disappointing results. In April 2002, defense minister Moise Lida Kouassi approached the witch doctors to make amends, offering them bottles of gin and large sums of money. The hex was lifted, and presto: World Cup qualification.
Witch doctors scatter charms on the field or smear the goalposts with magic ointments to keep the ball out. In 1984 no fewer than 150 fétisheurs stayed with the Ivoirian national team at their hotel before a crunch game in the African Nations Cup: Each player took a bath in water treated with various potions, before being invited to make a wish in the ear of a pigeon. Another soccer club was taken to court in 1998 when, following a decisive league match in Bouake, its players admitted to drinking a concoction prepared by a juju man (the case was dismissed).
Soccer's governing body in Africa is aware of the PR damage done by juju stories and has now banned "team advisers" from being part of a squad's official entourage. But superstition, of one kind or another, has always played a large part in sport, and fetishism is sure to continue in Ivoirian soccer. Before last September's crucial World Cup qualifier against Cameroon, the gutters of Abidjan ran red with chicken blood. For better or worse this is V. S. Naipaul's Africa: a place of magic that is also on display at the many roadblocks in the north and west of the country, where soldiers are convinced that the amulets they wear around their necks will ward off bullets. War, too, encourages superstition.
Everybody—on both sides of the war—is willing the team to do well in Germany. But the mix of soccer and politics can get ugly. When the Ivoirians lost for the second time to Cameroon in the qualifiers, and it was believed their chance had gone, Drogba—who had played brilliantly in the match and scored two goals—received threats and menacing messages from fans, and was worried enough to consider not playing for the national team. In 2000 Gen. Robert Guei, who had just engineered the country's first military coup, held the national team in detention for two days as punishment for being knocked out of the African Nations Cup in the first round. He stripped the players of their passports and cell phones, publicly denounced them, and suggested they should learn some barracks discipline. "You should have spared us the shame," he said.
With qualification for the World Cup secured, there is, for the time being, no shame. By itself, soccer will never bring about national reconciliation. But the summer of 2006 promises to remind Ivoirians, however fleetingly, of a national life beyond politics.
(Paul Laity is an editor at the London Review of Books who plays left back in pickup soccer games.)
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