As always, many seem to have faith in an African team performing well at this year’s FIFA World Cup in Russia. That’s commendable actually cos, to start with, it takes great faith just to have mustard-seed-size faith in any of these teams pulling off a mountain-moving performance at a soccer tournament of this magnitude. The ants always bite back and before we know it, we’re all stranded at the Group stage anthill swatting ants!
Midway the first round, things don’t look rosy for us already. The only thing that looks somewhat fine so far is the fancy Nigerian team jersey and perhaps their travel outfit. Unfortunately, the soccer governing body, FIFA, is yet to introduce a ‘who’s-got-the-coolest-jersey’ World Cup. Maybe then the Nigerians would’ve been the first to scoop that one.
In the meantime, the other day I heard over the BBC that a group of African football fans—no offence, but obviously Nigerian!—had been barred by officials from accessing the stadium in the company of their live chickens. Seriously, though, what did those fans think they were (voo)-doing?!
Now, going into the second round stage in a few days, what all you ‘team Africa’ supporters will need to do, as is normally the case, is prep yourselves well with these most basic tools: a logarithm book and a calculator. Scientific FX-991 is highly recommended. Please forget about contacting your ancestors already cos now even the live chickens have been banned!
Additionally, consider buying a BP machine/heart-rate monitor. The Pathologist will need it much later during postmortem to tell the rest of us how many kilometers your heart raced while it furiously thumped back and forth inside your rib cage during those nerve-wrecking 120minutes, extra time inclusive, before it gave way. He’ll also report to us how many liters of liquid waste your kidneys squeezed out of your body in those final 30minutes of the game. I can’t begin to imagine how many kidneys are gonna go into overdrive this season!
You’ll need a very warm jumper as well, preferably with a hoodie, cos there’s a way temperatures tend to suddenly dip especially when things are going awry. And the advantage with the hoodie is that the person you’re seated next to won’t be able to see your face cringe each time that ‘star’ striker fires the ball wide. Guaranteed, they’ll be doing that throughout the game!
I strongly recommend you also buy yourself an original set of fake nails to use during the nail-biting penalty shootouts. Otherwise, after those extremely tense 10 minutes of penalty kicks, you might be shocked to find that not only are there no nails left on your fingers, but there are no fingers either! You nibbled on them! All you have left is your palms. So, now you even look like a leper.
Also, you’re going to need to have the phone contact of a Professor from the faculty of Advanced Mathematics at a leading University cos, tell you what, these African soccer computations and permutations can mean to get really brainy. And if you’re into sports betting, you better have that guy’s number on speed-dial; and have plenty of airtime. If you’re on 075, you can do that annoying thing that every Airtel subscriber does. Find out if he has an Airtel line other than the MTN he just gave you, so you can call him endlessly for free.
More importantly, you’ll need to watch all the second and third round games with your Doc seated next to you so he can monitor your blood-sugar levels in realtime. Personally, a doctor friend advised that I desist from rallying behind any of the African teams cos there’s no hospital in the world that performs surgeries on broken hearts—not even in India. Besides, those Indian doctors are quite expensive.
