Hello and welcome to The Long Wave! We are now a few days removed from Senegal’s dramatic win at the 35th Africa Cup of Nations. I made the trip to Morocco to experience my first Afcon, and it didn’t disappoint. The tournament, especially the final, had the sporting world talking – for better or worse.
From the iconography on display in the stands to the histrionics of those final moments in Rabat, and what it all means for Morocco’s grand events strategy, this week’s newsletter examines five key cultural and sporting reflections from an unforgettable tournament that had something for everyone, regardless of how much you like football. Here are five things we’ve learned from Afcon.
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Morocco rolled out an intense PR campaign
Morocco’s broader strategy is to demonstrate to global players, such as Fifa, that they are capable of hosting high-profile sporting events. At Afcon, they were out to prove a point. It was evident as soon as I walked through Mohammed V airport, where passengers were met with live displays from musicians and dancers, while the streets outside were covered in flags and Afcon branding. All this before the pomp and ceremony that accompanied the national team’s matches at the Prince Moulay Abdellah Stadium in Rabat.
However, for some locals, the ambition represents an obsessive need by the country’s government to project an image to the outside world that far exceeds their willingness to help their own people on the ground. For example, there were criticisms about the speed of the state’s response to the 6.8-magnitude earthquake in the north-western Al Haouz province in September 2023, which sits in stark contrast to the speedy pace of stadium construction. “If you go [to Al Haouz], you will still see the people [who] have no house until now,” says Yacine, who works for a French NGO in Rabat. Displacement in urban areas such as Casablanca and gen Z-led protests in October last year bemoaning a lack of hospitals reflected a sombre pre-tournament mood.
Morocco brushed off the sceptics to put on a largely successful tournament, but it wasn’t without controvery. Senegal’s claims of inadequate treatment by the hosts, if true, could demonstrate that Morocco is not as ready for the big time as it wants the world to believe. People may be focusing on Brahim Díaz’s crucial penalty miss or the brilliance of Pape Gueye’s winning goal, or the Senegalese walk-off that has prompted the Moroccan FA to announce it is pursuing legal action. But in the days after, the clips of ballboys, under instruction, hiding towels from the Senegal goalkeeper Édouard Mendy and his deputy Yehvann Diouf are what jars. It’s fair to say that the context matters little here; it leaves a sour taste to watch the hosts implement such extreme gamesmanship, trying to police and physically challenge a Black goalkeeper at a time when the balance of power was weighted with the north African hosts. Not the best look for a nation hoping to host the 2030 World Cup final.
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It was the most diasporic Afcon ever
This was an Afcon where the global reach of the Black diaspora was apparent: British and American-born Nigerians in Fez, Parisian Senegalese in Tangier and Portuguese Mozambicans in Agadir, to name a few.
Nassim Bellaoud and Soriba Cissoko, born and raised together in Paris’s 18th arrondissement, are second-generation Moroccan and Senegalese, respectively. “Afcon is always a big tournament in the diasporas,” they told me. “Like in Paris, we have a lot of Moroccans, Algerians, Malians, and Congolese and French-speaking Africans who always follow it. So to be here is amazing,” said Nassim, who took the opportunity to visit his home town of Khemisset and to do a tour of the host cities with his friend. Soriba’s decision was more organic – he saw “tickets were cheap and Morocco is not far”, so he chose to “follow the growing movement, the energy and the atmosphere” on the continent.
Afcon’s reach extends way beyond want happens in the stadiums. Across the world in little versions of Kingston, Accra, Lagos and Douala, people flocked to watch parties in cafes or function halls. Tomisin Ogunfunmi, a Nigerian from Dallas, Texas, and his friends Abdulkadir Fiqi, a Somali, and Ammar Alinur, an Ethiopian from Brooklyn, told me, in Rabat’s pouring rain, that the popularity of the competition is trending steadily back home. “Zohran [Mamdani, mayor of New York City] put together these watch parties, but so have my west African friends, and they are usually a big thing,” says Fiqi.
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Lumumba’s legacy endures
Arguably, the tournament’s iconic image came from superfan Michel Nkuka Mboladinga, otherwise known as Lumumba Vea. Dressing up as the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s revered first leader, Patrice Lumumba, and remaining stock-still throughout every match, he helped to remind many of the iconic status Lumumba still holds.
Algeria’s Mohamed Amoura learned that lesson after he mocked Lumumba Vea following Algeria’s win over the DRC; the outcry was so loud that Amoura later apologised, citing ignorance and insisting he had not meant to insult the DRC. In response to the perceived disrespect, Nigerian striker Akor Adams paid tribute to Lumumba by doing his famous pose when Nigeria beat Algeria 2-0. For me, Lumumba’s re-emergence in this way has served as a useful counter to the sometimes insulting Eurocentric memeification of Afcon. I hope the DRC secure qualification for the World Cup in March, because the more we see his pose, the more it resonates and reminds us of the values embodied in Congo’s first leader.
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It brought a new era of coaching opportunities
It wasn’t so long ago that there were complaints from the late Nigerian coach Stephen Keshi on the role of white coaches in African football. In 2013, white foreign coaches outnumbered African ones by nine to seven. At this edition, 15 of the 24 teams in the tournament were led by African coaches, with 11 advancing beyond the group stage, and all four semi-finalists were coached by African managers: Walid Regragui (Morocco), Hossam Hassan (Egypt), Pape Thiaw (Senegal) and Éric Chelle (Nigeria). So it was particularly heartening to see Thiaw carry on a recent trend of local coaches winning Afcon since 2019.
On the night of the final, Thiaw earned himself a pantomime-villain tag in Moroccan media, amid some unsavoury scenes. But it was the tactical nous of Thiaw and his calm throughout the tournament, up to those final moments under intense pressure, that played a significant role in Senegal claiming their second Afcon title.
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The sounds of the tournament linger on
This song from Wally Seck and this floor-filler by Moroccan artist Stormy stayed playing in my headphones. I was intrigued by Angolan artist Cleyton M’s Money – it’s a bassy song that gets you moving, with a deliciously choreographed video, so I wasn’t surprised to see it go viral.
Unsurprisingly, though, it is many of the home nation’s chants that linger. When I attended Nigeria’s third-place playoff victory over Egypt at Casablanca’s Mohammed V stadium, I was alongside a sizeable Moroccan contingent who wanted to see their neighbours. Dima Maghreb, which translates as for ever Morocco, rang out in the stadium. The best example of lighthearted banter was when the whole crowd chanted “Hossam Hassan aqra” at the Egypt head coach, which I discovered was them calling him bald in Egyptian Arabic, showing it’s not safe anywhere in the world, it seems, for the follically challenged.
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