Really interesting stuff Kampala. Might explain Mbia love of the swallow dive. But Diakite was born and raised in France, so we'll have to find another excuse for him. BTW, is the African Cup of Nations really huge out there?
Yeah Diakite is perhaps just pretty bad, I dont know really, he might pick up bad habits when he goes on duty for Mali but its not really much of an excuse seeing as its about 1 week a year. The ACON isn't massive at all really. I think if your team gets to the final or its hosted in your country, then people take notice. The premier league is God out here really and everything else takes second place, last years' final was on a tiny tv where I watched it while a re-run of I think Everton v Fulham was on the big screen. International football in general is pretty small, the Euros were bigger this year than they have been but it was met with a bit of confusion by a lot of people. This year the ACON has been pushed out of the football channels on Supersport (South africas version of Sky) so it doesn't compete with EPL re-runs and live games which will stop even more people watching it as a lot of people just get the basic sports channels which include the 3 football ones and no one is going to upgrade for the ACON. This year was a bit different to usual with no long group qualifiers, just a series of one off 2 legged ties. For this I must say that Uganda went pretty mental as they have not qualified for 40 years for any tournament. We lost 4-1 away in Congo and everyone gave up but then somehow won 4-0 at home to get into the playoff where we drew the champions Zambia. Losing 1-0 from the first leg, the home tie was set to be amazing but the week before the game they put the price up to £10 (its usually about £2), so loads of people didnt go but EVERYONE watched it on tv. I was at the game and the quality (particularly from Zambia) was dire. Uganda ended up winning 1-0 and losing 13-12 on penalties. I think this years' will be the best for a long time as it is in South Africa and they are obviously re-using all of their world cup stadia, so the cameras, and pitches will be good, while there should be a fairly good crowd at each game. Saying all of this I won't be watching much of it, i might watch the final but i really doubt anywhere will be showing it if there is an EPL game on, the quality is really bad and they definitely lower their standards when playing against other african sides, we had Senegal come to play us here in a WC qualifier and they too were awful, Papas Cisse was much, much worse than our own namesake (though he did score a tap in). There were quite a few premier league players playing for Senegal that day and they looked like a pub team, I was really disappointed with them. I guess it says something of the appeal of the EPL that Africa would rather watch it than its own tournament
