No matter what happens to Ivory Coast against Argentina today, or to Angola tomorrow, Ghana and Togo in the days following, know this: Just coming to Germany on the strength of their football is a major accomplishment for these World Cup debutants. Racked by civil war, or suffering great political and economic instability, they have defied the odds—and more established football powers, including Nigeria, Cameroon and South Africa—to be here.They face greater obstacles in the days to come: Ivory Coast are in the “group of death”, with Holland and Serbia-Montenegro the other teams, Ghana face only relatively weaker opponents in Italy and the Czech Republic. Little is expected of Angola and Togo anyway. Pele’s famous prediction of 30 years ago—that an African team would win the World Cup—won’t come true in Germany.Yet they aren’t here to make up the numbers: Each minute they spend on the field is a message back home—and, indeed, to the rest of the world—of the human capacity to triumph against the odds. Some of their players are household names across the footballing world; now, their task is to put their countries on the map.The team most likely to do so is Ivory Coast. Not so long ago it was a model African state, its cocoa and coffee plantations underpinning the benevolent dictatorship of president Felix Houphouet-Boigny. Not only did he call in immigrants to share in the riches, he ordered tolerance for the largely Muslim influx, though he himself was a devout Catholic.His death in 1993 plunged the country into chaos, and a division between the Christian south (where, for example, Chelsea’s Didier Drogba comes from ) and the largely Muslim north (Arsenal’s Kolo Toure). Legislation was passed against first-generation Ivorians holding government positions and, by 2002, the violence was bad enough for UN peacekeepers to be called in.Today, the French colonial class is mostly gone, as are the cocoa and coffee industries. But Ivory Coast has world-class footballing talent—and now a team on the biggest stage of all.Indeed, football may yet be the country’s largest industry, and commodity of export. Abidjan, the economic capital, has 300 academies run by locals and French expats. Like the IIT/JEE tutorials that dot urban India and claim to deliver the middle-class dream, many of these academies are little more than strips of bare earth. There is no schooling as we know it but it doesn’t really matter: What good would a degree be? Instead, they offer something better: sharpening skills that could get one lucky boy a ticket to the real academies of Europe.The real McKoy is Asec Mimosas, an Abidjan club once coaches by the legendary Philippe Troussier (who coached Japan at the last world Cup), known as the “white witch doctor” for his successes in African football. Asec is the alma mater of Kolo Toure and six others in this squad.But another statistic offers hope for Ivory Coast, and a plan for the future of its football: Six of the current squad have played at one time or another for Belgian club Beveren. Located in a tough, racist part of Antwerp, the club stands out because the roster is almost completely Ivorian. It’s the result of a syndicate set up by Jean-Marc Guillou, a French coach formerly with Asec, contracted to supply talent to Beveren.Success is a vicious cycle. The more Drogbas and Toures there are, the less children—and, indeed, parents—will focus on education per se. And the less chances there are of Ivory Coast pulling out of its current national slump.Meanwhile, the African question continues. When will an African team win the big one? “Perhaps never”, says one Ivorian journalist. “But we may surely see a team of Africans, playing for another country, winning it.”
