There is a potentially deadly situation brewing for U.S. soccer in Africa — and it has nothing to do with the Americans feeling hard done by because its player Ricardo Clark received a red card for a knee-high kick at Italy’s Gennaro Gattuso in South Africa in the Confederations Cup.
All the United States lost in Pretoria on Monday was a game at the start of a tournament that serves as a rehearsal for next year’s World Cup finals.
More serious, by far, were the murder late Sunday of a player gunned down by armed robbers in Nigeria, the terrorist attacks on three American oil facilities in the Niger delta, and a warning that the Under-17 World Cup scheduled for Nigeria in late October and early November could be a target.
The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta — MEND — issued an e-mailed statement sent to, among others, several news agencies, of its intent to widen the attacks and concluded: “We also take this opportunity to advise FIFA to have a rethink about Nigeria hosting the Under-17 World Cup tournament at this time, as the safety of international players and visitors cannot be guaranteed due to current unrest.”
This specific mention of the youth tournament should concern FIFA, soccer’s world authority, rather more than the usual laments that referees are not doing their job, or that, in South Africa, stadiums are only half full, buses are late or the playing fields not pristine.
FIFA has made this Africa’s year. South Africa now, and in 2010. Egypt hosts the Under-20 World Cup in September and October. Nigeria is struggling to convince FIFA that its stadiums are ready for the Under-17 event.
The United States is one of the 24 nations that has qualified for this tournament. And Chevron is an American company pumping oil in the delta.
FIFA’s first duty, surely, is the safety of those boys. They follow in the footsteps of Cesc Fàbregas, a Spaniard; Nii Lamptey, a Ghanaian; Landon Donovan, an American; and Toni Kroos, a German, the golden ball winners of past world youth tournaments.
The countries qualified to send teams to the championship this fall are Algeria, Gambia, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Malawi, Iran, South Korea, Japan, the United Arab Emirates, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Turkey, Costa Rica, Honduras, Mexico, the United States, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Uruguay and New Zealand.
As FIFA rules stand, any of those nations could be punished for pulling its boys out of the conflict zone in Nigeria. Once FIFA has decreed that the games go on, attendance is compulsory.
Jack Warner, a FIFA vice president from Trinidad and Tobago, heads the inspection committee that is due to revisit Nigeria in July. His task is onerous.
Sports have a long history of refusing to be frightened off by the terrorist threat, and there would be little hope of sustaining the Olympic Games or the World Cup if it were to bow to every threat or warning.
However, the murder of Abiel Tabor as he drove home to his family after the team that he captains, Bayelsa United, won Nigeria’s Premier League on Sunday, exacerbates the issue facing FIFA. If Tabor were the victim of random armed robbery, it is scary enough; if the gunmen knew who he was and had a more sinister agenda, the implications for the Under-17 tournament are horrendous.
Meanwhile, some 2,500 miles, or 4,000 kilometers, south, the drum beat is rolling toward the senior World Cup.
The organizers of the World Cup trumpet the noisy exuberance of local fans as one of the selling points of next year’s competition for traveling fans and the vast audience of armchair viewers alike. But it’s a personal wish that South Africans be reintroduced to their skills on the drums. What we have right now, transmitted by television, is a tuneless cacophony of horns, bugles and sirens that sound like swarms of irritated wasps.
There may be nothing FIFA or anyone else can do to relieve us of this headache now, but the promised sight and sound of real Africa it is not.
The authentic skills on the ground, however, are visible.
Now that all eight countries invited to test four of the 10 stadiums being built for 2010 have each had one match, a shape begins to grow.
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