When Allen Hopkins asked me to write about staging the World Cup in Africa in 2010 I was taken aback because I thought what would I say? I heard rumors FIFA was interested but I didn’t take them seriously.

After reading Allen’s column, I found myself thinking he’d really said it all. What more needs to be said? What can I add? Africa is not ready. The World Cup in Africa is a probable catastrophe.

Allen mentioned the lack of infrastructure, but the inability of Africa to host the World Cup goes many layers beyond the lack of stadiums. There is no money in Africa. How does FIFA expect to make a penny? In fact, it’s likely that FIFA will lose money.

And what about the security? What African country has the ability to provide enough security to protect Westerners from going to Africa, regardless of the country, to risk exposure to terrorists and thieves? And what about travel? Have you ever driven on an African road or taken public transportation in Africa.

Anyone who thinks these aren’t real risks just doesn’t know Africa.
 
One only has to look at the insane response in Northern Nigeria recently to a comment made by a local journalist that Mohamed might have really enjoyed meeting one or more of those women who had come there for the Miss World contest. The comment sparked a killing spree that led to 200 deaths. Ask Nigerians about the situation there. The Muslims and the Christians are poised with hands outstretched to choke one another’s throats.

Saying all to this is not easy for me. I love Africa. I lived there many years. My deceased wife was African, born and raised in rural Kenya, and my children were born there, some of them in bush hospitals. I have countless relatives in Africa. They fill the hillside above the village of Kapsokwany on the slopes of Mount Elgon. I have nothing but good memories of Africa. I have nothing but the belief that Africa deserves better than it currently is experiencing.

Africa’s troubles are not solely it’s own making. Africa didn’t seek to become a collection of modern countries with electrical lines, paved roads, and skyscrapers. All of this was inspired, and thrustetd upon them and fostered by the Europeans who colonized the continent.

Some Africans are happy to have benefited from the colonization of their continent by foreign cultures, but many aren’t.

Africa has experienced unbelievable changes since Europe first invaded its shores. Make no bones about it Europeans did not go to Africa as Peace Corps volunteers. They went there for their own purposes and progress: gold, diamonds, ivory, slavery, land, and they grabbed the best and most productive land creating lush farms, and idyllic lifestyles, all at the expense of the people and animals who lived there.

Now Africa has supplanted their colonizers and those in power have, in many cases, behaved with the same selfgratification of their white counterparts who preceded them. Africa has grown dramatically and some countries had, up until AIDS began decimating the populations, the highest growth rates in the world.

Rapid growth, the dissolution of tribal customs and the arbitrary imposition of national boundaries have been a recipe for horrible and trying consequences. Most African countries are impoverished to levels that are not imaginable by Westerners, TV pictures don’t do it justice.

Recently I returned to Africa, specifically Kenya and Malawi. I visited my Kenya born daughter now a Peace Corps volunteer in Malawi. I also visited orphanages for children with HIV, did some teaching at the medical school in Malawi, and worked with UNICEF on the prevention of HIV transmission from mother to baby.

Although the soccer community knows me as a coach and an exowner of a San Francisco professional soccer team, my real profession is medicine I’m a pediatrician. I also speak Swahili fluently and can even jabber in Chichewa. It becomes useful when you want to know what’s going on.

I feel that I see Africa in ways that few Westerners see Africa because of my experiences there, because I can hear what Africans have to say, and because my African family is well over 10 times the size of a normal European/American family.

I was deeply saddened by my recent trip to Africa. I saw many Africans die, most of them children. I saw far more who were going to die. HIV has had devastating effects in Kenya and Malawi.

The Africa I saw reminds me of a patient with a terminal illness. The eyes are sunken and darkened. The face is expressionless. The patient hardly has the energy to stand, and the gait has no spring to it. The hand is often held out with the palm upwards.

Allan Patton said it long ago, and prophetically, “Cry the Beloved Country.” I think that I’m constantly crying inside, in a quiet personal way, that no one can see, and I don’t mind admitting it.

I really can’t agree with Allen Hopkins more. He has cited many reasons why Africa is a bad choice for the World Cup in 2010. I added oil to the fire he set by citing more reasons why it won’t work. Yet, my heart is not with this rational conclusion.

True if FIFA is smart and if FIFA wants to do the best for FIFA, it should look elsewhere. Allen would love for FIFA’s eyes to redirect towards the United States. And I think he’s right. It’s well known that the World Cup of 1994 was the most financially successful World Cup in the history of the games. It would be a repeat, no question.

The irony being that the vast majority of Americans don’t give a hoot about this great sport that has the potential to unify the world in ways that diplomacy and business could only dream of. From that perspective, the USA doesn’t deserve this sport and certainly the USA doesn’t need the financial benefit from this sport.

Africa, on the other hand, loves soccer with a passion Americans don’t really understand. Maybe the image of Willie Mays, the child, hitting a ball with a stick on the streets of Brooklyn conjures up emotion that is reasonably close to the passion that children have for this game in Africa.

I once watched a game on the island of Mombasa, in Kenya, played next to an old Portuguese fort that overlooked the Indian ocean. The field was about 4050
yards long, but irregular without one right angle to a corner. It was all dirt, with rocks jutting from the ground here and there. There wasn’t one flat area. It was near the island’s edge. One sideline was jagged rock and the slope down to the water. Another was the wall of the fort. One goal line was half way up the hill towards the shops that surrounded the fort. The other goal line was at the end of the angle where the fort met the water.

The ball had no cover. The player’s had no shoes. The goal was made of tree branches, unequal in size, knotted with rope and crooked in construction, barely able to survive a shot on the post.

The players had uniforms, amazingly. One team was green. The other was blue. Every square inch of space that could be occupied by fans was, and there may have been 1000 people crammed into a total space that might b e sufficient for 75 people to stand without touching one another. Yet no one cared about any of that.

I, and my children, all soccer people, watched this game in utter disbelief from the top of the fort’s wall. When the Blue team scored against the Green, you might have thought for a moment, a goal has scored in a World Cup match.

Sure, if FIFA has any sense at all, they will listen to people like Allen Hopkins and they should take his advice. On the other hand, if FIFA listens to the people of Africa, I don’t think there’s a better choice. Besides it’s about time Western World gave something back to Africa.

So to hell with all the reasons why the World Cup shouldn’t happen in Africa. If there’s any continent in the World that needs the World Cup, if there’s a continent that can show it’s love for the game, and if there’s any continent that would show it’s appreciation for the games being staged there, it’s Africa.