Martin Samuel: You want a proper group of death? Go to Angola!

19 August 2009 12:59
Mark this day in your diaries because it will come in handy later. January 10, 2010. It is the date that Chelsea' s championship challenge officially hits the buffers; Manchester City's, too, if the club has managed to sustain its early promise. January 10 is when the 27th Africa Cup of Nations begins, and January 31 is when it ends, during which time there are four Barclays Premier League matches scheduled. Fixtures that will have to be completed without Didier Drogba, Michael Essien, John Mikel Obi and Salomon Kalou in Chelsea's case, and Emmanuel Adebayor and Kolo Toure for Manchester City. Do not worry. This is not one of those colonialist rants about those uppity Africans having the cheek to want to play for their own countries in a tournament that has been running since 1957 (and therefore pre-dates our own European Championship by three years). There should be no place in any debate for the complaints of selfish managers who buy African players and then express indignation when they want to play for African teams in an African tournament. Mark Hughes, the Manchester City manager, knew the score when he proffered the contracts. A good African player will be lost to the Africa Cup of Nations every two years because these players cannot be expected to feel less of a duty to their country than players from Europe; in many ways the pull is stronger due to the desire to inspire and give hope back to regions that do not often get the sweet end of the lollipop. And no, they cannot have it in the summer months, as Avram Grant, the former Chelsea manager, suggested when his plans were interrupted two years ago, because the seasons do not correspond. When the competition was played most recently in Ghana, Grant demonstrated a typically patronising European attitude when informed that the rainy months would make correspondence with our football season impossible. 'In Europe, we play in rain,' he sneered. Actually, we don't. Not African rain, anyway. In June, Ghana receives an average of 198mm precipitation, which is four times the British rainfall in December. During a freak summer in 2007, 140mm fell here and resulted in the biggest civil and military rescue effort in peacetime Britain. Gloucestershire Fire and Rescue Service attended 31,800 calls in two days, as opposed to its usual load of 2,000 in one year. Now add a quarter of that rainfall again and you have Ghana in June. Fancy a game of football? In the years when World Cup involvement was just a dream - Egypt competed in the finals in 1934, but after that there were no African teams present until Morocco qualified for Mexico in 1970 - the Africa Cup of Nations represented the only competitive football of true significance played on the continent. Now that European clubs think they have discovered Africa, the least that can be done is to honour the competition that fed the love for football there and inspired its players. There is, however, a sting in the tail this season: literally, for some. For if a manager was thinking of places he would cheerfully send£25million worth of striker in January, it is fair to assume thatAngola would not be high on the list. Scorpions are common, antidotesless so, but a predatory arthropod with its wild up is apparently theleast of your worries. The advice from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office does not paint a pretty picture and even Lonely Planet, the backpackers' friend, sounds a little skittish about travelling in the region. 'Don't walk anywhere at night,' it says of the capital Luanda, before warning against wearing gold, silver and noticeable watches - including fake ones - and using a mobile phone on the street at any time of day. 'Travel in Angola remains the preserve of the adventurous or die-hards,' it concludes. 'Running water and electricity are still comparative luxuries for all but the highly privileged.' And footballers are highly privileged, we know that. Yet, there is a world of difference before the level of luxury that can be afforded by, for instance, Sheik Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, owner of Manchester City, and the Federation Togolaise de Football, who will be accommodating his expensively-purchased goalscorer Adebayor for the month. There will be 16 teams at the Africa Cup of Nations and they cannot all be put up in the same suite in the same decent hotel. Somebody is going to end up roughing it, particularly as much of the tournament will take place outside Luanda, in Benguela, Lubango and, most delightfully, Cabinda. 'Accommodation and transport are extremely limited outside of Luanda,' says the Foreign Office. And here is their considered opinion of Cabinda, an exclave and province of Angola, separated from the rest of the country by land belonging to the Democratic Republic of Congo. 'We advise against all but essential travel to the interior of Cabinda Province. In 2008 there were reports of violent incidents, including rape, murder and kidnapping involving foreigners and Angolans in the Province. Groups claiming responsibility for these attacks have declared their intention to continue attacks against foreigners.' Cabinda is a disputed territory and armed groups seek its independence. As its coastline contains some of Angola's richest and most developed oilfields, there is great reluctance to allow this to happen. What better place, then, to hold five Group B games, a single Group A game and a quarterfinal during the Africa Cup of Nations? It is not as if some of the most famous sportsmen in the world might not be a target for armed freedom fighters wishing to draw attention to their cause. The Cabinda bowl would certainly seem the one to avoid at the draw on November 20. Now that is what you call a group of death. Getting around is also going to be a lot of fun. From November 15, 2008, the European Commission decided that all Angolan airlines should be refused permission to operate services to countries within the European Union because they were unable to guarantee that the airlines met international safety standards. The Foreign Office says of Angola: 'Most internal travel continues to be by air, though the quality and maintenance of aircraft operated by some airlines within Angola cannot be relied upon. It is recommended that you avoid flying with any Angolan-operated airline if an acceptable alternative means of travel exists.' In other words, take the bus. 'Outside urban areas, mines and unexploded ordnance remain a problem, including on roads, verges, bridges, in buildings and the countryside. There have been instances of mines exploding, with loss of life, in places previously considered to be safe. During the rainy season, November to April, bridges and roads risk being washed away by sudden floods and there is an increased chance of mines becoming displaced and surfacing outside known mine fields.' Then again, maybe not. This is what happens when a major international sports event is awarded to a country emerging from 27 years of civil war. It is right the Confederation of African Football defends the existence and timing of its competition but not, surely, that it shows such total disregard for the real problems in some parts of the region. Health care is limited outside Luanda. Cholera outbreaks are common, as is malaria. If there is any factor that will one day break the Africa Cup of Nations, it is not its location in the calendar, but the unnecessary risk taken by valued players at major European clubs. Just because Chelsea can live without Drogba for a month does not make him expendable. Their fixture list in January is not too demanding: Hull City away, Sunderland and Birmingham City at home, Burnley away, but if a key player was to return ill or exhausted because the conditions of the host country were utterly opposed to maintaining the athletic levels of a modern footballer what would be the reaction then? The CAF have held the competition in some challenging places before. Burkina Faso in 1998, for instance, a country that skirts around the relegation places in the Human Development Index. While we were out there, it was announced that the 2002 tournament would be staged in Mali. The locals expressed surprise. They could not believe it had been given to such a poor, underdeveloped country. Maybe you had to take the trip from Ouagadougou to Bobo-Dioulasso to appreciate the irony of that one. Anyway, Burkina Faso went off largely without complication. The odd shambles, a couple of journeys delayed by elephants on the motorway, but compared to the worst organised tournament in the history of football - the 2004 European Championship in Portugal - it was a breeze. In Mali, four years later, local police arrested Cameroon's coach before a semi-final game on the charge of putting juju spells around the goal, so maybe the Burkinabe had a point. Defending champions: Egypt won the 2008 tournament African footballers are not going to be startled by African conditions, but that does not make them immune to the dangers. Accusations of witchcraft will pale into insignificance if a plane goes down or a hotel goes up, or a player who is central to the ambitions of a club the size of Chelsea or Barcelona contracts an illness that puts him out of action for longer than the allotted time. It is bigger than that, though, bigger than the self-interested demands of the European elite, because whatever political strings were pulled to take this competition to a country still in recovery from a conflict that claimed 500,000 lives, the result could have desperate consequences. The war displaced a third of Angola's people, and in 2003, a year after it ended, the United Nations estimated that 80 per cent of the population lacked access to basic medical care, 60 per cent lacked access to water and 30 per cent of Angolan children would die before the age of five. Average life expectancy was set at 40. This has now fallen to 37, with only the inhabitants of Swaziland in greater peril, while the CIA World Factbook currently lists Angola's infant mortality rate as the worst in the world. It is impossible to consider a football tournament in Angola without questioning the priorities of those who have taken it there. Clearly, the country has bigger problems than making sure Drogba and Essien sleep safe at night. Asking why this additional burden should be placed on the hosts, and the players, seems a reasonable place to start. As dumb ideas go, the Conservative proposals for education take some beating. George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, said last week that his party intended to follow a Swedish system in which independent companies and organisations are allowed to supply education within the state sector. 'Education will be free, but not all teachers will be employed by the State,' he said. Leaving aside that a country of nine million people may need less centralisation of services than one of 60m, was this not the thinking that proved so flawed when applied to the London Olympic project? The moment there was a financial squeeze, the private money that was due to finance the construction was withdrawn, leaving the Government to pick up the tab. Fine if what is being built is temporary accommodation for the Latvian water polo team; not so clever if what crumbles into dust is your school. CONTACT MARTIN AT: m.samuel@dailymail.co.uk  

Source: Daily_Mail