Main image: Yugoslav forward Dusan Bajevic (R) heads the ball past substitute goalkeeper Dimbi Tubilandu from Zaire to score a goal on 18 June 1974 in Gelsenkirchen during the World Cup first-round soccer match between Yugoslavia and Zaire. Bajevic scored three goals as Yugoslavia beat Zaire 9-0. [Photo by AFP]
In the final instalment of his series on the future of football, Baffour charts Africa’s remarkable journey from exclusion and stereotype to growing influence at the highest levels of world football, arguing that the continent’s rise is far from over. Missed the earlier parts of the series? Start here .
For readers who missed Part 3 , let me recap. Black Africa (otherwise known as Sub-Saharan Africa was going to the FIFA World Cup for the first time in 1974. Its sole entrant, Zaire (now known as DR Congo) had given Scotland a run for their money in the first game before losing 2-0. Before the second game with Yugoslavia, the Zairean players decided to go on strike because their Sports Minister was playing hide-and-seek with the money meant to pay their bonuses and other welfare packages.
Their President back home in Kinshasa, Mobutu Sese Seko, was furious. A compromise deal saw FIFA chipping in with 3,000 Deutsche Marks per player to save the World Cup’s reputation.
The demoralised Zairean players took to the field on 18 June 1974 against Yugoslavia and lost 9-0. It was a scandal of epic proportions. Zaire went on to lose 3-0 to Brazil and packed their bags for home without their Yugoslav coach, Blagoje Vidinić, who jumped ship and sailed straight home to Belgrade, leaving his players in the lurch.
Imagine the commotion in Kinshasa when the players arrived from West Germany, the venue of the 1974 World Cup.
In 2002, a good 28 years after the event, former Zaire defender Mwepu Ilunga revealed in an eye-opening interview that the farce started when they were told by their sports minister that the players would not be paid their bonuses after their 2-0 defeat to Scotland. So they decided not to show up against Yugoslavia. In the end, as seen above, they did show up and lost 9-0.
After the match, Ilunga said, President Mobutu “sent his presidential guards to threaten us. They closed the hotel to all journalists and said that if we lost 4-0 to Brazil, none of us would be able to return home.”
Ilunga’s revelation was confirmed in a 2018 interview by Zaire’s former captain, Raoul Kidumu who told the world: “We were aware that every team received a big qualification bonus [from FIFA and partially passed on to the players] of half a million dollars. That was our money; we had been asking for days. We shared the same hotel with the players of Haiti and every day we saw them arrive back with bags full of presents: jewellery, radios, clothes. Bought with their bonus.
“Meanwhile our Minister of Sport was running around with his bum bag. He was arranging the financial matters with FIFA. On the eve of the game with Yugoslavia he called us together for a meeting. We thought: ‘Finally!’
“Until he said he had to share something with us. ‘Regarding the money, it will be sent straight to Zaire.’ That’s when we knew we wouldn’t see a penny of it. All the players were angry, including myself. We wouldn’t play against Yugoslavia. A team at the world championships had never forfeited [a match] before. We were determined to be the first.”
Kidumu said half an hour later, another meeting was called. An angry President Mobutu was on the phone from Kinshasa. Kidumu was handed the phone: “The President was angry. A strike? He said he would be watching the match the next day on TV. He told me he would be watching whether or not we entered the pitch. It sounded like a threat, so we gave in. We were afraid of the consequences. Not even for ourselves, but our families back in Zaire. So we showed up for the match. But you have to understand that our morale was gone.”
Photo taken during the Zaire v Brazil match on 22 June 1974, at the World Cup in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. (Photo by AFP)
Kidumu also revealed that Mobutu threatened that if they lost the third game against Brazil by more than three goals, there would be severe consequences.
“We started the match [against Brazil] with the intention to show the world we could play football,” Kidumu said in the 2018 interview. “At half-time it was only 1-0. But the coach deceived everyone. Together with the goalkeeper, he threw the game. Kazadi, our goalkeeper, later confessed it. Brazil had to win by at least three goals to qualify, and they arranged it. You should re-watch those last two goals. A blind wench could have stopped those balls.”
All game, Mobutu’s threat of not losing by more than three goals to Brazil was ringing in the ears of the Zairean players. So midway in the second half when Brazil were leading by 2-0 and got a free kick in a dangerous position just outside Zaire’s penalty box, Ilunga darted out of the defending wall and kicked the ball away as hard as he could, before Brazil’s free kick expert Rivellino could take it.
BBC’s John Motson reported it as a “bizarre moment of African innocence”, but Ilunga knew what he was doing. In his 2002 interview, he explained that he “was fully aware of the rules and had hoped to be sent off in an act of protest”, but referee Nicolae Rainea only showed him a yellow card.
He said he deliberately kicked the ball away to put Rivellino off, to distract him from scoring. But Brazil went on to win 3-0. The Zairean players yet returned home to face an angry Mobutu.
According to Kidumu, the President “gave us an earful. He looked at us over the rim of his glasses, like an angry dad to his children: ‘So you thought you would rebel? I gave you all a house and a car!’ [when they won the 1974 AFCON]. He was furious. Not one player dared to speak. It was deathly quiet. In the end I softly asked to have a word, and I apologised for what happened. It’s the only thing I could have done. He finished with ‘Next time I will throw you all in jail.’”
Their punishment was swift. None of the players, Mobutu decreed, would ever leave the country. Their names were added to a “forbidden to leave the country” list at airports and other ports, thus scuppering their prospects of playing abroad.
Shattered reputation
The farce of 1974 did not only affect Zaire (which changed its name back to Congo in 1997), it shattered the reputation of African football in general. Congo itself would not qualify for the World Cup for 52 years thereafter, only doing so in 2026.
“Those defeats were seized upon, magnified, and fuelled familiar refrains,” ESPN’s Ed Dove reminded us in a recent article. “African teams were athletic, physical, but not tactical. They were passionate, but undisciplined, unpredictable, unreliable. This reputation travelled with teams and players, discussed in centres that still viewed Africa as a periphery, a place of raw material, of minerals, of labour, players exported, talent extracted, qualities exoticised, racially framed.”
At the 2026 World Cup, the former German footballer and TV pundit Bastian Schweinsteiger repeated the racist trope after Côte d’Ivoire had made Germany sweat for their 2-1 win in their Group of 16 match. He described the Ivorian performance as: “A bit African football, a bit unorthodox, a bit wild, a bit perhaps also not so conditioned by tactics.”
When Schweinsteiger was tackled by an angry Ivorian coach Emerse Faé, he rolled back, saying: “I was talking about football, not about people. This is a football analysis. No more and no less. There’s no way I wanted to offend someone.” Clever cat, he was afraid.
Thank God, those racist times have changed. In fact, truth be said, Africa itself had added to the confusion when the Confederation of African Football (CAF), based in Cairo, Egypt, and run largely by Arab North Africans in the top echelons, was for a long time racist in its attitude to Black Africans. There is a perpetual belief in North Africa that the inhabitants there are not Africans. They are Arabs, so there is a superiority complex, sadly.
I remember my colleague, Anver Versi, from Kenya, the current editor of New African , researching his 1986 book, Football in Africa (commissioned by Guinness), and going to Cairo to gather material for the book, and being told by a North African CAF official to more or less sod off because African football amounted to nothing.
“This was going to be the first ever book on African football,” he recalls. “Some time ago, I had introduced coverage of football in the magazine and the response had been fantastic. With the African star on the rise, a far-seeing editor at Longman’s asked me to write the book – to introduce African football to the world and dispel the negative myths around it.
“It was an opportunity not to be missed. Guinness, a great supporter of the game, especially in West Africa, said it would buy 15,000 copies. But information on the continental game was sparse, and I needed the background and the stats.
Versi recalls: “So I decided to travel to Cairo to meet CAF officials as all my letters were never acknowledged. Finally I met the man in charge and told him what I was after. He took his time, then said: “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why do you want to write a book on African football? No one is interested. I’m busy, please go away”.
“I could not believe my ears. I left, dejected, but later, with help from the Ghana Football Association, which had an archive, and the AFP in Paris for pictures, I finished the book,” he recalls.
“Guinness staged a massive launch party in London, inviting all the top soccer journalists to attend. I was invited to scores of radio and TV interviews. The book, in English and French, sold 75,000 copies. Finally, African football had arrived, and subsequently, the African players who played overseas enhanced its reputation. The composition of CAF officials also changed dramatically, thank God.”
Yes, those racist times have indeed changed. Black Africans have since become heads of CAF, including the current one, Patrice Motsepe. Africa has seen its lone entrant at the World Cup increase to two in 1982, five in 1998, and 10 (nine direct with a playoff option) in 2026. Africa’s improvement among the elite of global football has helped the prospects of Black players around the world. And the march is on.
The post Is the future of football Black? (Part 4) appeared first on New African Magazine .
Is the future of football Black? (Part 4)
Aggregated summary from an independent source. Read the original at NewAfricanMagazine.