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So THESE guys will go all the way?


Venn

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Not at all, most of the South Africans have adopted Ghana as their team now for obvious reasons. USA will get a bit of the vuvuzela. America are definitely favourites but what has that counted for so far in this tournament!

Perhaps, but I can't help but feel that it's selling Africa a bit short to consider similar two countries as culturally and ethnically different as Ghana and South Africa. But I won't pretend I know how the domestically based fans feel. I have, however, noticed that the atmosphere in games featuring West African teams isn't particularly partisan, so I'm not worried about the Ghanaians' advantage.

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Somewhat patronizing to consider them to be playing at 'home,' in all honesty. Not that you meant it that way.

You're right, it could come across as patronizing, but I've heard several African commentators (especially from SA) mention that the locals will get behind any of the teams from the continent if the hosts are eliminated. There's also been a few who have spoke collectively about African's failures in the World Cup rather than individual nations.

At the risk of sounding even more patronizing, I think a lot of the "unity" amongst Africans has to do with continually feeling like they have something to prove. Even one African team finding success would be inspirational for a continent of people who always feel like underdogs.

Again that's just a guess since I haven't ever asked any of my African friends about the topic. Anyway, none of it matters since it's going to be all U-S-A! U-S-A!

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tbh I find it weird that Africans support each other's nations. We don't do that at all in Europe, pretty much everyone I know who's European was happy to see the frogs and Italians out for instance.

Well, it's not like South African supporters would rally just behind any African nation. Nigerians are...let's just say not very popular in pretty much the rest of Africa and the Algerians have more ties to the Arab world than the Black African one.

Neither of them could hope for much support by the home fans at this World Cup and the same goes for Cameroon, who have been boring everyone to death with their horrible drab playstyle for several Nation Cups now. The Ivory Coast on the other hand would probably receive quite some attention because of the many big names on the squad.

The Ghanaians are somewhat of a special case, both the country as well as the national team have a very positive reputation throughout Black Africa,mostly for historical reasons. From the sixties to the early eighties the Black Stars were not only immensely successful on continental ground but also did the lion share of defining what African football is.

To most Africans Ghana is kind of the pre-Dunga Brazil and the South Americans usually have plenty of non-Brazilian supporters around the world as well. Of course the rest of the world is completely ignorant of this context and probably never heard of Ghana before the World Cup in 2006. Nothing new there.

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It's an American vs British thing. Pretty sure it's a grammatical error too, it just doesn't make sense really.

'Correct' use of prepositions isn't really as agreed upon as we like to think, actually. (I learned this tutoring high schoolers for standardized tests.) At any rate, there's always a degree of abstraction involved in taking a human institution ('scoring') and injecting it into the semantics of physical relationships (against, on, etc.).

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Well, it's not like South African supporters would rally just behind any African nation. Nigerians are...let's just say not very popular in pretty much the rest of Africa and the Algerians have more ties to the Arab world than the Black African one.

Neither of them could hope for much support by the home fans at this World Cup and the same goes for Cameroon, who have been boring everyone to death with their horrible drab playstyle for several Nation Cups now. The Ivory Coast on the other hand would probably receive quite some attention because of the many big names on the squad.

The Ghanaians are somewhat of a special case, both the country as well as the national team have a very positive reputation throughout Black Africa,mostly for historical reasons. From the sixties to the early eighties the Black Stars were not only immensely successful on continental ground but also did the lion share of defining what African football is.

To most Africans Ghana is kind of the pre-Dunga Brazil and the South Americans usually have plenty of non-Brazilian supporters around the world as well. Of course the rest of the world is completely ignorant of this context and probably never heard of Ghana before the World Cup in 2006. Nothing new there.

Yes, in all the surveys before the WC Brazil was by far the favorite team of the South Africans after their own one. England was pretty popular too.

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Well, it's not like South African supporters would rally just behind any African nation. Nigerians are...let's just say not very popular in pretty much the rest of Africa and the Algerians have more ties to the Arab world than the Black African one.

Neither of them could hope for much support by the home fans at this World Cup and the same goes for Cameroon, who have been boring everyone to death with their horrible drab playstyle for several Nation Cups now. The Ivory Coast on the other hand would probably receive quite some attention because of the many big names on the squad.

The Ghanaians are somewhat of a special case, both the country as well as the national team have a very positive reputation throughout Black Africa,mostly for historical reasons. From the sixties to the early eighties the Black Stars were not only immensely successful on continental ground but also did the lion share of defining what African football is.

To most Africans Ghana is kind of the pre-Dunga Brazil and the South Americans usually have plenty of non-Brazilian supporters around the world as well. Of course the rest of the world is completely ignorant of this context and probably never heard of Ghana before the World Cup in 2006. Nothing new there.

Many Africans don't have the same connection to a nation as we do here in Europe either, for historical reasons. So it makes more sense to support a fellow African team, even if it's not your own nation, than it does for us Europeans. All African countries have also been outsiders for so long, that when they finally have the WC at home it makes more sense to support whoever does well, especially when that team is Ghana or Ivory Coast (as opposed to Algeria for example).

We keep hearing from interviews all the time from SA too, that people don't just view it as an event for SA, but for the whole of Africa. So it probably feels quite natural for various Africans to support African teams.

Just a shame only one team got to the last 16 :( I think Ivory Coast could have done quite well had they just gotten out of that 'impossible' group.

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