Cabo Verde vs Ethiopia, January 2022.
“Football, at times, can be an emotional catalyst, and is capable of uniting the hearts of an entire population. Particularly, if this population is made up of barely a half a million people distributed over seven habitable islands of an archipelago nation. The islands of Cabo Verde sit a little bit more than 500 miles off the coast of Senegal in West Africa. Their independence, conquered after years of armed struggle in the forests of Guinea [Bissau], came in 1975. The leader of this liberation movement, called the PAIGC (Partido Africano para a Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde), was Amílcar Cabral, one of the most important names of African liberation. …”
Africa Is a Country

“On one of the main highways in Treichville, a bustling district in the Ivory Coast’s economic capital Abidjan, people weave in and out of traffic trying to sell you everything you can possibly imagine. Vendors skirt around the hoods of cars and nimbly sidestep out of the way of motorcycles to offer up sunglasses, pillows, toothpicks, perfumes, footballs, socks, carpets and cameras through small gaps in the windows. Women in traditional dresses glide across the cracked asphalt on sandals to supply you with peanuts, fruit and local delicacies while a man strolls through the gridlocked vehicles pushing a large wooden wheelbarrow. …”
The Athletic

“As a footballing country, Cote d’Ivoire only started having real success at the club and international level in the 1990s. The first African Cup of Nations title that the national team obtained was in 1992 in Senegal. That very same year, Africa Sports reached the summit of continental club competitions by winning the Cup Winners’ Cup in 1992 and then again in 1999. Its biggest rival, ASEC Mimosas won the Champions League in 1998. These glorious years, however, were dashed by political chaos and instability, which began at the start of the millennium. …”
Africa Is a Country

“I mean, where do you start? Sometimes it is impossible to express the things you have witnessed and do it justice. You see travel shows, taking you to parts of the world you would never go to and they make you think you have felt the place. Yet no amount of film, no number of photographs and maybe no number of words can recreate energy, certainly not the energy on the road from Abidjan to Ebimpe, where informal settlements crash and blur and it is a challenge to know where you really are. …”
The Athletic

“Four men in uniform are studying the Stade Alassane Ouattara Ebimpe with their arms folded. They are locals and their uniform is a combination of floral-patterned shirt, jeans and flip-flops. Such is their fixation, it seems as though they are waiting for what has been called the most advanced football arena in Africa to express itself, maybe even take off and fly away. The stadium certainly looks like a spaceship, one that was landed incongruously on the red earth of semi-rural Abidjan, Ivory Coast’s de-facto capital. It is not a machine-beast, lumpen or identikit, but an architectural wonder with subtleties, such as a roof that curves and swoops around its giant bowl like an ocean wave or a skateboard rink. Below, enormous coliseum-style pillars support a fascia that includes latticing reflective of the Ivory Coast’s tricolour flag. …”
The Athletic