World Cup of Scrutiny.

Another soccer World Cup starts today in Russia. Congratulations everyone! We really look forward to a real football fest. Which is what the World Cup should be all about: grand displays of the world most popular sport that one is ever unlikely to find on another platform. We are constrained to dwell a bit on global expectations of this fiesta because the last two editions have not been, generally speaking, all that edifying. The 2010 edition in South Africa was more notable for the hideous noises vuvuzelas were making, the poor pitches and the mayhem in the French national team than for any footballing spectacle. The last edition in Brazil did produce a footballing spectacle, the 7-1 drubbing of the host nation by Germany in the semi-finals. The Horizonte Massacre, as this incredible defeat became known, after the city in which the match was played, has been dubbed Brazil's darkest hour. And rightly so. No national distress in the country is ever going to replicate people weeping openly in the streets as the match wore on and in the aftermath. But before that, in one of the group matches, obstreperous headlines had been made by Luis 'the Snake' Suarez,  the talented but flawed Uruguayan player who had little restraint in reprising his notorious biting inclinations on the Italian player, Giorgio Chellini.
We rather want to see spectacular scissors and scorpion kicks in this edition. We don't want to see Maradona's infamous Hand of God but his famous half field dribbling that eventually nailed England in the 1986 World Cup, we simply want to see what we saw in 1970, 1982, 19...
Yet we cannot help bringing up two things to scrutiny. The first is the rather curious theory that football can be separated from politics or political behavior. This bunkum used to be promoted by the erstwhile FIFA Secretary-General, Sepp Blatter, and his predecessor, Jao Havelange.. Blatter has since been disgraced in a corruption scandal and falling into disrepute too is his theory. The host country, Russia, have been behaving very badly in the international arena. In 2014, it annexed Crimea, a region that geographically belongs to its weaker neighbor, Ukraine, against strident international opposition and that would have been a hefty outrage on its own but Putin has compounded mayhem by sowing seeds of subversion in the eastern parts of the country. Ukraine is now practically partitioned into two and the Donetsk region seems in all respects, a buffer zone to Russia. It is difficult telling what would have happened if Ukraine had qualified for the tournament but clashes in the streets of Russia between fans of the two countries would not have been out of place and the police would have had a hectic time separating them, just as it is now separating politics from football. Or the fake murder of the journalist, Babchenko, a Kremlin critic, in Kiev from the distressing comedy the relationship between the two countries has become.
Still Russia had enough mischief left to attempt to kill ex-double spy, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter, Yulia, in Salisbury, southern England with a particularly poisonous nerve agent, Novichok. Although Russia has strenuously denied culpability, few people are convinced and the idiotic, amateurish assassination attempt has visited on Russia a fresh round of international sanctions. England matches in Russia will surely be focus of international attention in this tournament and that will hardly be because of footballing reasons. 
Under close scrutiny too will be the the fate of the two biggest superstars in world football: Cristiano Ronaldo of Portugal and the Argentine, Lionel Messi. If any of these two countries fail to win this tournament, then the chance might as well be gone that they will ever be regarded as real greats. Check out all the illustrious names in world football: Pele, Maradona, Beckenbauer, perhaps the only thing that separates t

hem into the exalted realm they belong is that they all won the World Cup. If Messi or Ronaldo fails to win it, they will be superstars, for a period or era, but never all time greats. We hope they will strive to reach above themselves, have a magical tournament and catapult themselves into that realm that the likes of Pele belong.  

M.K.O.Abiola:Buhari Rights a Wrong.

Righting a wrong is not, often, the same as righting a situation. In most instances, the wrong outlives the situation so long that rectifying it can only be symbolic. Of recent, President Trump issued a pardon to Jack Johnson, the first American heavyweight boxing champion. Johnson happened to be a black but had a white wife and was jailed under the notorious Mann Act forbidding one to transport a woman across state lines for 'immoral' purposes: charges as racially motivated as they can be in that Jim Crow era. That can only happen now in a distressing comedy but over a hundred years ago, such offenses, even though hideously unfair, were serious violations under laws extant then. Now, such pardon cannot undo the term Johnson served in prison but such gestures help put events in the correct perspective and could help prevent a future recurrence.
It is in light of this that we must appreciate and understand the decision of President Muhannadu Buhari to declare June 12 of every year the appropriate time to celebrate democracy in Nigeria. It was on that day in 1993 that Nigerians rose en masse to elect Chief M.K.O.Abiola as president of the country on the platform of the Social Democratic Party in an election widely adjudged to be the freest and fairest in the country up to date. Thereafter, the polls were strangely annulled by the then head of state, General Ibrahim Babangida, under whose tutelage the elections were organized and conducted in the first place: a heinous cancellation that sparked a quickfire series of crises such as the formation of the Interim National Government headed by Chief Ernest Shonekan, soon declared illegal by the courts and in no time toppled by General Sanni Abacha, the de facto military strongman;  the death of Abiola in Abacha's prison as a result of insisting on reclaiming his stolen presidency; the incarceration of General Olusegun Obasanjo for coup plotting; the death of Abacha himself and the restoration of democracy on May 29, 1999.
Officially recognizing Abiola's role in the evolution of democracy and freedom of choice that we now enjoy will not bring him back to life and neither will it even begin to repair the ruin visited on his businesses and large family. The posthumous medal awarded him, Nigeria's highest, will do him little good and will certainly fit poorly on his neck skeleton. Symbolic things do no such things.
But this recognition will help etch vividly on our mind that his struggles helped call time on military misadventures in Africa and went a long way in cementing democracies now entrenching solidly all over the continent. It will also give some joy to those splendid supporters who stood by him till the end. Once again, Buhari makes the right choice.

Why Zinade will not miss Real Madrid.

Few, very few, managers seem to be interested in the Real Madrid job, thrown wide open with the sudden, unsurprising surprise resignation of Zinedin Zidane. Sisyphean jobs, which the position has become, are hardly appealing. No sooner do you roll the huge, taxing stone of success to the top than it rolls down and you start all over again, heckled to heavens by a mean, taxing, vociferous crowd Charles Dickens himself would have found confounding. For a start, the manager is a workman whose tools and parts, horribly expensive tools and parts, had been assembled by the workstation and he is expected to perform miracles with what he has been provided. It might be that the parts may not fit in with the design and machine he has in mind, it may be that a part may turn out bigger than the whole, the disharmony does not really matter, he is expected to proceed pell-mell. After all only a lazy or uninventive workman complains about his tools. And if he sets about his task with zeal and determination and eventually wins a trophy, his situation even gets the more complicated. Another tournament, another competition is just around the corner and he must reprise the whole regimen of success again, as if he was in continual duel with competitors in eternal slumber or inertia: folks not facing the pressure of winning from their own supporters too. And if you think that is the end of the intricacy, you aint seen nothing yet.The definition of success itself, among the fan base, may turn out to be very maddening. For some, it may be Zidane winning the La Liga, or winning the Champions League three times in a row, or winning the World Club Cup. A combination of all that may still not assuage some sections of the crowd. Zidane won the eternal enmity of some fans who vowed never to forgive him for that chaffing 3-0 home defeat to Barcelona in the league. It does not really matter that Real Madrid loses to a team at the 19th position of the table, it may not matter that they have not won a trophy for three seasons, the cardinal sin might be losing to bitter rivals, read enemies, such as Barcelona or Athletico Madrid. At the Bernabeu, there are so many segments of the crowd to appease. The New York Giants, a team of comparative size in American or gridiron football have not been NFL champions since 2012 and no major upheaval have been recorded at the club as a result of this. Real Madrid have been champion of Spain and three times master of Europe in the same period and that is not appeasing many fans. It was just like appeasing Hitler: the more territories dignity you conceded, the more his appetite got whetted for greater capitulation. Heavens will not fall if the same New York Giants loses to city rivals, New York Jets, it will not fall too in Madrid if Real loses to Athletico, but the coach will certainly feel something very heinous falling on his head.
Zidane might have felt it was not possible for him to go beyond his unprecedented success at the club and so decided: not to throw in the towel, or quit when the ovation was loudest, but to simply shock the shockers. Many other great managers: Mourinho, Ancelotti, Benitez have left under less propitious circumstances and one could conveniently argue the club is getting its just desserts. More so that many big names being bandied about such as Pochettino and Loew do seem to be all that eager to be associated with the job. The logic is very simple. Many of them may just feel that replicating Zidane's  achievements at the club may be tasks too tough for health. And after that? Still being put against the ropes by an insatiable fan base.
The latest is ex-legend, Raul Gonzalez. Why not?  Doing another Zidane might be the only option left for the club? But even then many are already thinking Gonzalez might be too fragile for the job. Every manager, in any sporting club, works under one pressure or the other. The urge to win is what drives sports, especially football. Hence he is virtually working in a cauldron, the fire continually stoked by fans. In Real Madrid, it is an inferno that they stoke.
  

New York Giants

Raul Gonzalez

Zinedin Zidane

What does Kim really want? Trump, Pence and Bolton won't let us know.

What does the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un really want? We don't know, simply don't know. In suddenly agreeing to talks with the US, perhaps the most remarkable volte-face of the new century, a huge factor could have been at play in the mind of this guy that used to sport a very bad haircut. A factor, or several factors. Things we could only guess. It might have even been a dream: after all without a dream we wouldn't have had something, a movement as momentous as Christianity. At least in its present form.
There are a lot of things we do not know. We do not know  whether his hand was forced by crippling US sanctions, severe penalties that have brought the at-best crawling economy to a coma. Made more so by the fact that China that used to supply some oxygen have decided to cut some gas, thinking it more profitable to bow to US pressure that to bow to some nebulous friendship. Chinese-style economic reforms are just across the border and these might have appealed to him quite strongly, a panacea to some future turbulence and insurrection that might sweep his dynasty out of power: reforms that will never happen with sanctions in place. It might be that he got his inspiration by simply gazing across the border, seeing the development and affluence his foes and kinsmen in South Korea are basking in. It might be he was simply indulging himself in some diplomatic tomfoolery and that he was as interested in peace as Harvey Weinstein was interested in women dignity, confirming what the often tactless Vladimir Putin said was the resolve of the pariah state to eat grass rather than give up nuclear weapons. Then his influential, blushing sister, Kim Yo-jong, could have been whispering some filial softness into his ears. He might even know that the much touted nuclear weapons were not as perfect and developed as we have been made to believe, in no shape or condition or advancement to threaten South Korea, let alone the US. He might be genuinely interested in peace, secretly coveting the sure Nobel Prize that will come to him by pulling off the twin magic of unification and denuclearization.
Answers we would have surely obtained at the June 12, US-North Korea summit in Singapore, a coming together that would have laid bare precise intentions on both sides of the divide. A summit that would have been victory for all of us, those confirming suspicions or confirming expectations. The tone here is a bit fatal because the summit looked increasingly to be in jeopardy, judging by recent comments from both sides of recent. Now President Trump has decided to pull out of it outright. None of the two sides wins laurels for tact and subtlety but North Korea is the bull in the China shop and Trump's aides seemed to be nursing the habit of chasing it away with a pepper spray. The trouble with this administration is that there are too many hawks in in. Hawks snatch things and what is being snatched now is defeat from the jaws of victory. Victory that the highly anticipated summit would have given us. Whether those who suspect or anticipate.
There is no doubt Trump really wanted the summit. After such petty scandals at home, he needed the big diversion the summit would give him. It did not matter whether it was successful or not. The fact that it is happening alone would have been a very big step for him.  It seemed the loud-mouthed hawks that fly around him had different things in mind. Kim has a big chip on his shoulder but Bolton, architect on the infamous Iraq weapons of mass destruction, should have known linking denuclearization to Gaddafi of Libya was going to be a mammoth faux-pas. Even less subtle threats were ratcheted up by the Vice-President, Mike Pence, in a recent interview with Fox News. Pepper spray, pepper spray in the whole shop, everywhere.
The popular author, John Grisham, in the run-up to the polls that brought Trump to power campaigned vogorously for his opponent, Hillary Clinton, and when asked about a year later if he had reasons to change his mind, he said no. The only thing missing to confirm his misgivings was a crisis. Which he was sure the president would mismanage. Trump is capable of mismanaging peace either.

With Expendables Like These...

One of the most remarkable success stories of the season, in sports and elsewhere, is the octane-fire rise of the ice hockey team, the Vegas Golden Knights. Only in its inaugural season in the highly competitive sport, it has unbelievably reached the finals of the Stanley Cup, ice hockey's equivalent of the Super Bowl. Some say they are on the verge of making history: they are not, they have already made history, the first expansion team in fifty years to make the finals playing in their first season. The team is made up of players practically rejected by their former clubs, expendables in the sport parlance. These castoffs, throwaways, can still be acquired, bought in an Expansion Draft, a particularly distressing flea market peculiar to the sport. It was for no reason they were dubbed the Golden Misfits. But if you think hope had sunk as far as it  could go, consider the obliterating news that the head coach was fired by the Florida Panthers in the 2016/2017 season: a club that, while not taking anything away from their history and performances, cannot by any stretch of imagination considered one of the illustrious names of American ice hockey. The dismissal took place during an away game and coach GG, Gerald Gallant, was rumored to have been denied even a seat on the team bus and had to pay his own cab fare to the airport. If the largest group of outcasts, rejects, write-offs ever assembled in a place, the Vegas Golden Knights was one. Lots of folks joked it must have taken an audacious nerve of naming to have attached  the adjectives of golden and knights to the club. Few, very few expected them to lift their own hockey sticks, let alone a sword and now they roam in a territory where the big boys of the game such as the Detroit Red Wings, the Chicago Blackhawks and the marvelously-named Pittsburgh Penguins used to call the shots.
The odds staked against them reaching thus far was enormous, dispiriting, in all aspects similar to the chances given Leicester Football Club of England to win the 2015/2016 Premier League. Here was a club that escaped relegation by the whiskers the previous season. Leicester went on to win the league, a feat the whole world had said would only be achieved in the realm of dreams. Like Leicester, the Vegas Golden Knights have shown us that the dividing line between dream and reality could be very thin, very nebulous indeed. Their belief has won, the unflagging determination to rise from the abyss of despair to dizzying heights of glory and illumination. Their story would have been a fable indeed if reaching the Stanley Cup final was their sole achievement but we have added goodies in the fact that the Vegas Golden Knights have done good in other aspects, It is the only major sports club, American Football and all, that has Las Vegas as its home and gives the city a huge sense of togetherness, camaraderie, if not unity. The first match they played was only five days after a gunman killed fifty eight concertgoers in  Las Vegas in October 2016. The Golden Knights won the match and provided some upliftment for the grieving city.
So the stones the builder rejected have become the centerpiece of solidity and over-achievement, golden stones so to say. These expendables are not expendable, not on your life and they have shown us that being given the tag of failure, fiasco does not in any way equal the tag of damnation.

Aristotle Mentors Wenger: But the Business of Football is no Business.

"Watch the costs and the profits will take care of themselves."
Poor Arsene Wenger. As a student of economics, he must have gushed over this ancient dictum: one day he was going to run a football club - forget Arsene who? - one of the biggest on earth, and he must have taken old Aristotle admonition as a tool to be taken far more seriously than a managerial wisecrack. He wasn't the only one: for ages, it was an advice that had saved many a business and businessman from collapse and ruin.
Wenger turned out to be an excellent master at tweaking costs. He would buy players dirt cheap and place them under salary structures that were not going to trouble club finances for a very long time and with his undoubted technical ability, mold them into stars that would eventually leave at enormous profits to the club. Aristotle must have beamed with delight in his grave. He also was an excellent salesman. His beautiful brand of football was to do all sorts of exciting things to British football, a brand hitherto notorious for long balls and hooliganism. His football tactics served him well, and so was the financial model that propped up the alluring brand. The pinnacle of his smart money moves was the construction of the magnificent Emirates Stadium.
But the business side of football wasn't going to remain the business of pizza or laundry soap for long. Strange competitors would enter the market. Rich guys with with oversized pockets and king-sized egos. Starting with the Russian oligarch, Roman Abrahamovich, football clubs became mere expensive acquisitions, like yachts, private jets and priceless arts and jewelry. Clubs became expensive toys that helped massage personal egos. In other words, costs no longer mattered, profits even less. Overnight, the double model of success: winning on a solid footing of financial prudence split violently, prudence cast into the abyss of immediate gratification. A satisfaction that could be bought by spending lavishly on the best footballers on earth. The Chelsea model was soon riding hell-for-leather on the increasingly limping Arsenal model.
Wenger's model wasn't going to gain traction too by the ever-changing nature of the game. There was no football during Aristotle's time but even this wisest of all men must have been a bit stretched imagining the business side of this sport: a product with a demand so maddening you could play the most absurd version of Russian roulette with its costs and still come out a winner. Football clubs like Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Barcelona, Manchester United were incurring hefty costs in acquisition of players and were still making hefty profits. Talent was hemorrhaging at Arsenal under Wenger's watch and there was little he could really do about it. He could not bring new infusion of prime talents and it was inevitable the club would slip rapidly. No Messi or Ronaldo was coming down to Arsenal.
He would eventually bring in expensive talents like Lacazette and Aubameyang into the club but it was all too late. Inertia and rot had set in and such acquisitions were more or less panic buyings. Football has grown malignant. Even not watching the costs is no longer a guarantee that success, which has practically replaced profits, would take care of itself. Aristotle would have been amazed.

Fury of the Fans: West Ham is just the Beginning.

According to his own testimony, Mr Slaven Bilic, former manager of West Ham Football Club, sometimes after he was sacked as manager of the club, perhaps compelled by hurtful soul-searching, decided to place calls to some of his former players, inquiring about what he could have done to avoid the fate that befell him. It isn't a pleasant fate, being sacked from a workplace, and few places are as alluring and glamorous as a sports club, especially a football club. Especially a Premier League club. Nobody cares about the manager that produces his Coca-Cola, or his Mercedes or his Louis Vuitton handbag but all eyes are on Cristiano Ronaldo who manufactures the football the fans gush over on the football field: and Zinedin Zidane, the manager that designs the manufacture. And nowhere is sports scrutiny more intense than the Premier League, an arena filled with money, noise and hype. And emotions and passions so combustible they explode at the slightest ignition. Therein success could be so sweet and rewarding and, moving to the other end of the spectrum, failure that inevitably leads to a sack could be very bitter, painful. Especially for a coach who was certain he had put in a load of credible shift.
The unanimous reply Bilic got from his own former players is as shocking as it is telling: simply, he was not hard enough on them.
In other words, the modern-day football player no longer derive joy and elan from a sport that pays him obscene sums of money, that gives him instant world-wide fame, that helps secure his future. After collecting a fat pay packet every week, he still expects to be whipped in line to do his job. Like an expensive Bugatti that has stalled all of a sudden, he expects to be pushed before he starts.
Take a look at Paul Pogba, sometimes a world record holder not in terms of performance but in terms of the fees paid for his services. Ever since his arrival at Manchester United his services and performances have taken back seat to a whole tranche of issues dominated by speculations and counter denials, searing rumors and conjectures. Now his not being on the field seems more valuable than being on it.
Or Mesut Ozil, a gifted footballer who switches on and off at will. Plays sumptuous football when there is a fat contract to be signed and then slumps to the lowest depths of abysmal football immediately after putting pen to paper. But, be as it may, the Premier League is filled with fantastic performers who take enormous pride in the jersey that they wear and work their socks off to defend the honor of their club. Take the Brazilian Kennedy for example, a role model who decided to jettison the glamor and riches of Chelsea to jump at the chance to play regular football and whose heart-warming performances is one of the major reasons Newcastle is inching gradually towards safety. He is a fantastic example, quite in contrast to the off and on pitch body language we've been seeing at Arsenal, West Ham, West Brom of late.
Happily, West Ham players have gotten their wishes, the push they wish for provided by their own fans yesterday. The manager, David Moyes, was of the opinion the fans crossed literary and figurative lines by invading the pitch to protest their players' dreary performance. Sir Trevor Brooking, an ex-striker of the club echoed similar lines when he said the six home games due to the club before the Burnley game presented an opportunity that is now is in serious jeopardy. Both gentlemen are seriously out of tune with the realities of the modern game. Soccer is a game of passion and emotion, a combustible mix likely to boil over at any time, a game meant for the horde and not gentlemen for whom its rules are obviously drawn for. Everywhere, not England alone. It is telling that a little after the West Ham brouhaha, a similar scenario erupted in France where fans of Lille also invaded the pitch and aimed kicks at their own players after a below par league game. Brooking should have kept his opinions to himself. If you have six home games and you are losing the first of such like that, what assurance have you got that the rest will not go the same way? The rest can as well be moved to the doldrums. Burnley is a decent club and Sean Dyche has done a fantastic job on the players, but West Ham is a massive club, one of the biggest in the world and the fans were not going to take it lightly that the players were not losing to Burnley but have put themselves in a position where losing to Burnley would jar to no end. The defeat was therefore not the iceberg, but the tip of the iceberg that tore huge gashes in the hull of the fierce West Ham pride.
Another pitch invasion will happen, probably at West Brom. Another owner is going to have a coin thrown at him soon, a symbolic gesture towards the Shylocks in football. By fans who are the real owners of such enterprises.

A Letter to Laurent Koscielny's Boy.

Dear Lad,
Many of us who support Arsenal Football Club do not really care about the ownership of the club. As far as we are concerned, it could have been acquired by aliens from outer space. Neither do we worry so much about the board or what even transpires in the dressing room or on the training pitch. Involvement and commitment really grip our hearts when the players file on to the pitch in a match and the referee blows his starting whistle. For the next ninety minutes or so, we clap or cry, shout in joy, ecstasy or in pain and hurt. We could end up in delight or gloom. In short, it is the footballing aspect of the club that really concerns us and in that regard most of our attention dwell on the manager of the club, Mr Arsene Wenger, and the players we revere, almost worship, and whom we dedicate our money and effort and time to watch perform. Players led by your father, as captain of the club.
Good lad, you  must have seen images of that distraught young supporter during the League Cup final against Manchester City. In all likelihood, he is of the same age as you and I had no doubt you must have shared in his pain and trauma occasioned by a miserable defeat. At times, pain and hurt might be the strongest of all feelings that bond us together and I believe your young heart is too good not to be moved. Too young and tender to be oblivious of the fact that hurt and pain have been our lot of recent, young and old, hundreds of millions of Arsenal supporters all over the world. The club is one of the biggest on earth, some say the most elegant, and if only the goodwill and love it receives all over the world can win matches!
So the club has not been doing us a lot of good of recent but, young lad, you've done us a lot of good. More than, I'm sorry to say this, the players of the club led by your father have been doing us of late. By asking your father why the players have been playing so badly of late. During the ninety minutes or so that really matter, the manager is outside the pitch and cannot have too much control over the events that go on on it. He selects the eleven players he trusts will give him and the fans victory. What becomes crucial and goes on to determine victory is the tranche of skills, vision and passion, zeal and determination exhibited by the players in the match. Apart from the manager barking out instructions most of which is not heeded anyway and making two or three substitutions, winning a match solidly rests on the players. Led by their captain.
Hence it is very apt you should ask your father that salient question, apt that he is closer to you in space, time and place than Arsene Wenger. We don't know what he told you but it is an answer you yourself should have seen very clearly, the age being irrelevant. You could see it from outer space. You must have watched the Premier League match with Manchester United in which your father gave the ball away so sloppily that the much hated enemy scored instantly. It was a pure pass to the opponent. It wasn't a more heartwarming performance in the cup final and only on Sunday, Brighton scored their second goal after the captain, the same captain, inexplicably gave the ball away again. You would think that if the captain cannot marshal his troops, he would at least try to organize his defense, a department he was supposed to be a stalwart in and which has come for serious censure of recent in the downward spiral Arsenal has slipped into. In fact the defense is the culprit being fingered now in the continuous abject performances Arsenal has seen of late.
There is no doubt skills are abundant in the club. Your father and his troops have demonstrated that times without number. What has been in remiss is the tranche of zeal, skills, passion and determination. What sears the heart stronger than a sight of players walking so listlessly on a football pitch? Your father was given the honor of rallying the troops and that he cannot even do. That is why Arsenal is playing very poorly. The players have lost the motivation, but not the desire to collect their fat pay packets, and you've asked the right person why?
Did you see the way Aubameyang celebrated after scoring his measly goal against Brighton? He  seemed to be telling us that as long as he gets a goal now and then the huge money spent or being spent on him is quite justified. Leaving team victory and his paymasters, which include you and me, in the lurch.
Football is a ruthless sport and Arsenal players, in a perverse way,  are lucky to have a manager who is too trusting. A manager who expects a player to get up and dust his ass. When it is a very stout stick the ass needs to get hauled up.
    

President Pierre "Messi" Nkurunziza.

'There is always something new out of Africa'- Pliny the Elder.
But first let's start with an invention in a place far away from this mostly blighted continent. President Trump in far away America forms a football team. American football or gridiron football so to say and names it The White House Patriots. He spends most of his team moving around with this team and engaging all forms of opposition in football matches, a traveling choir providing the entertainment because the president claims to be an evangelical christian. So no Justin Timberlake or Janet Jackson and all that wardrobe malfunction nonsense, just thumping gospel music in heavy metal mode while the president and his team carry out another sort of thumping on the opposition: always scoring at will, always winning silly, with unbelievable margins. Because the president is not expected to be tackled, or roughened or impeded. If there is going to be any engagement, it would have to be the softest of all touches. In essence it is not supposed to be a contact sport anytime the president is holding the ball. So he makes all the throws, all the catches, all the running, all the touchdowns. He is the quarterback, the halfback, the fullback, the wide receiver rolled into one. And naturally he is the superstar and takes all the plaudits. And why not? He is the president of the United States of America.
That is until he travels to Texas and plays a team made up mostly of refugees being held in camps along the Mexican border. Latinos and blacks, guys being held in concentration camps. Fellows who were not in the happy mode at all. Guys who would like to kick some presidential ass. And which they gleefully did, roughening up the president, sending him tumbling into the dirt several times and getting his jersey torn. Respect my foot!
Naturally, the president is not happy about it, not happy at all and he gets the governor of Texas and his deputy arrested and corralled into a little fetid jail. Crime? Conspiracy against the president of course. You can't arrange a little roughening up of the president in the evening and expect to eat breakfast in your own house the following morning.
A very short, dystopian  story? Sure.
But if you change the settings to Africa, precisely to a nasty corner of it called Burundi, and gridiron football becomes soccer and Trump transforms to President Pierre Nkurunziza and the Texas team is replaced by a group of hungry refugees from Congo, you have the latest comedy from Africa. Nkuruziza runs a football outfit called Haleluya FC and as a self-acclaimed evangelical christian, travels with his own choir called' Komeza gusenga which in the local Kirundi language, means 'pray non-stop.'
A real, real comedy. Dystopian to the ends of nightmare. And not funny at all because the governor of Kiremba region of Burundi where the president was made to 'fall several times and kiss the dust' and his deputy are now in even a dirtier jail for conspiring against and humiliating the president. It is not everyday that Messi has his way. Even Messi of Africa.
What is fiction anywhere else in the world can turn into a nasty, grinding reality in Africa.
Yes, there is always something new out of Africa. And most of it is not always pleasant.