Well, it’s been another busy week in sport and the biggest news would have to be the opening of the African Cup of Nations: a three-week long football tournament contested bi-annually by African nations who have earned their ticket prior to the finals via a broader qualification group stage. The tournament always enjoys a significant amount of media attention but, as the opening week has proven, not always for the right reasons.
Equatorial Guinea and Gabon have been bestowed with the task of hosting the games. The logistics involved in the execution of a tournament of the scale as the African Cup of Nations may not be quite as colossal as our beloved ‘London 2012’, but are certainly highly comparable with the European Championship which takes place this summer in Poland and Ukraine respectively. Whilst our European neighbours appear to be struggling significantly with their own demanding construction schedule, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon have received only praise so far for their handling of the African games. Following on from the successful World Cup in South Africa, this is seemingly yet another large step in the right direction for African football.
Accordingly, the tournament has begun at electric pace. The goals are simply flying in which obviously begets entertaining games and satisfies viewers, neutral or otherwise. So, as far as the football is concerned, everyone’s happy and looking forward to two more weeks of high quality, competitive football.
However, everything is not quite as rosy as it may seem with the tournament; and particularly not with host nation and African Cup of Nations debutant Equatorial Guinea.
As BBC Sport unveiled earlier in the week, the players and management team of the Equatorial Guinean national side received the promised payment of $1 million dollar (£641,000) to share amongst themselves as reward for their narrow, but unexpected, 1-0 opening group stage victory against Libya.
Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue hands over the money to the Equatorial Guinea squad on Tuesday afternoon
Personally, I can more than understand the potential advantages of offering financial incentive to players. For example, in the eighties a young talented Dundee United squad defied everything but gravity by winning the Scottish championship one year and narrowly missing out on a European Cup final appearance the next (at the expense of Roma and a dodgy ref). Instead of receiving a grotesque weekly wage come rain or shine, the players of that squad would perpetuate their pay packet by winning week in, week out. However, the situation with Equatorial Guinea’s motivational millions is a far more suspect, and most probably corrupt bastardisation of the same salary method.
The first question on everyone lips as pictures of the obviously delighted Equatorial Guinean players were streamed, sent or bogged in, was where in the world did the money come from anyhow. The answer is quite simple. Teodore Nguema Obiang Mangue, Equatorial Guinea’s Minister for Agriculture and President Teodore Obiang’s son, promised the squad the reward from his back pocket, given they first defeat Libya’s team of course. This they duly did, albeit without much panache, and Obiang dutifully coughed up the cash in front of an array of cameras the following afternoon.
The question still remains unanswered however: where did this money come from? Nobody seems to be sure. Confusion has certainly arisen, though, as to how that amount of ‘prize money’ could be offered up in such short space of time, especially considering that the US government began legal proceedings with Obiang last year regarding the recovering of over $70 million worth of assets. It all just doesn’t seem quite legitimate.
Even if Obiang somehow did manage to fork out the funds himself and merely wanted to revel in, and even help progress the sporting exertions of his footballing heroes, fundamentally something just doesn’t feel right about doing your best for your national team in order to collect a cheque for a fair sum of $1 million at the President’s place after the game, does it? For me, this highly questionable episode highlights all that is wrong with the modern game. Yes, Dundee United players of ’83-85 knew that if they had a decent game they’d probably have a decent wage at the end of the month, but this was a totally different context with different amounts of money changing hands and with different ethics behind them. What worries me most about the Equatorial Guinean’s million dollar prize is that no one has any clue as to the legitimacy of the cash, and that Obiang has promised to hand out similar ‘rewards’ with each victory as it comes. Oh, and Equatorial Guinean won their second game last night 2-1 against Senegal.
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