Intended only for locals, the African Nations Championship is now an inspiration for others. Basketball especially, who decided to create theAfroCAN to look like him…
From goals to baskets
March 24 and 25, 2023 were painful days for Cameroonian football. THE Indomitable Lions A were held in check by Namibia’s Shalulile (1-1), scorer, Mamelodi Sundowns player and executioner of Coton Sport de Garoua in the Champions League, and the U23s beaten in Gabon (1-0).
Double setback, a severe disappointment that fans of the Triangle National calmed down with a landslide victory over Equatorial Guinea: 102-38. 64 points difference in a meeting under the hoop, counting for the playoffs of a young competition in which Cameroon will participate: theAfroCan.
Read also: Presentation – FIBA AfroCan – Qualifiers 2023 – FIBA.basketball
The CAN with an Afro cut
Referring to the Confederation of African Football, FIBA Africa, the umbrella organization of African basketball, imitated Issa Hayatou and gave birth to AfroCAN. Like CHAN and different from AfroBasket, basketball with an Afro cuta quadrennial tournament designed for African basketball players playing in Africa.
On the bench of the local Cameroonians, we particularly noted the presence of the technician who last year, had led Cédric Tsangue, Cyrille Liale and FAP of Yaoundé in the semi-finals of the Basket Africa League: François Enyegue. A guarantee of quality for the show which will be held in Angola from July 7th to 16th during the second edition of this celebration which began in 2019 in Mali, with a victory for the DR Congo.
Read also: Basketball: Kenya-RD Congo a final du prize AfroCAN (rfi.fr)
DR Congo, forever the first
It is not just the basement of the DRC that is rich. THE on-ground is also an ecological scandal. The men who are born on these black soils of fertility have an incredible talent that only music can explain.
When it comes to locals in African sport, DR Congo is never far, if not always above. First laureate of CHAN in 2009, she is also at AfroCAN, winner of Kenya (82-61) at Bamako.
A bad for a good
Symbolically, the CHAN and AfroCAN should not exist. Signs of regression, they clearly place African-African practitioners below those who evolve outside the continent, when all internationals should benefit from the same status. One has the impression of attending the ball of the natives on one side and that of the evolved on the other. Which is not normal…
In an ideal world, sportingly speaking, the CAN and theAfrobasket already facilitate cohabitation between nationals and “dual nationals”. All professionals, a player of the MTN Elite One benefits from the same respects as a resident of the NBA. Paradoxically, a utopia that CAN with an Afro cutmaterialize little by little by allowing the territorial to evolve in an international framework.
The game, master of the game…
Indeed, the CHAN, like theAfro Africa Cup of Nationshas sown a new elite of African sport: the glocals. If the CAN qualifiers are now so difficult, it is largely because of the latter, who practice them twice rather than once: to qualify for the CAN and to invite themselves to the AfroCAN… soccer.
It is no coincidence today that the winner of the CAN and that of the CHAN find themselves in one and the same “body”. Senegal went to win in Algeria like Cameroon in Blida before them, and yet the Algerian championship is supposed to be superior to Ligue 1.
There is a kind of emulation that tends to level the odds, by changing good into necessary evil. Morocco won 2 CHANs, 2018 and 2020, before playing the semi-finals of the World Cup. There is no lottery in football. It is by playing that we progress…
Those who follow the BAL will tell you: the ride is over. Since he rubs shoulders with the rigor of the high level, rubs shoulders with these American basketball players who have come to defend the colors of their clubs, their nations, African basketball has evolved considerably. US Monastir, defending champion, who had left to march on the Sahara conference this season, came out in the first round. That is to say…