Africa United : how football explains Africa

Football inspires competition and inflames passions nowhere as strongly as in Africa. Take the player born and raised in the Congo who scored the winning goal for Rwanda against the country of his birth and promptly had his house burnt down for his trouble. Or the Kenyan football chant ‘Oliech! Odinga! Obama!’, which celebrates the country’s star striker, its popular prime minister and its most famous adopted son.

Meanwhile, the influence of African football continues to spread rapidly throughout Europe. Today, no Premiership team is complete without a major African star—Drogba, Essien, Touré, Adebayor and Kanu. Countless African players are now enriching the world game and becoming household names.

Steve Bloomfield’s wide-ranging and incisive book investigates Africa’s love of football, its increasing global influence and the build-up to the 2010 World Cup.