The Midas Touch in Sports
Distinctions are drawn in several areas but not in sports where a level playing field is accorded contestants in the competition.
At the Group of Seven Most Industrialized nations, (G7), only few less developed nations are granted participation for special reasons. In sports, provided a collective team qualifies or an individual’s talent thrusts one into the circle to be counted, an even ground is fairly guaranteed for all, irrespective of their backgrounds as participants.
Football teams with multinationals as their playing body have warmed many hearts In the unsegregated nature of their jubilations of goals. Another version of the United Nations, the geopolitical organization whose wavelength is often coarse and gritty. Sports doesn’t know political colours and in some instances where politics and sports appeared to telescope at each other, they have proven to be chemically insoluble.
In extreme cases, political fanatics who belonged to political parties diametrically opposed to each other had closed ranks to celebrate sports. Magical isn’t it?
Seeing Ghana play the United States at Soccer World Cups, and several other such examples sent a powerful message about sports as a leveller and a means of escaping prejudices and segregation in other fields. Some of the world’s most prosperous destinations, Canada has participated in the soccer world cup only once and the 2022 edition in Qatar would be Canada’s second. Japan has seen more of the tourney but is surpassed in mileage by countries far below Japan’s industrialization and economic clout.
Even a juggernaut like China has made no appearance at all in the football Mundial and any qualification to this stage might initially go with the badge, minnows. Strengths and comparative advantages are unique to nations, thus even in sports, the economically stronger nations have their own areas of mastery.
The set of twenty-two players who chase the single football on a stadium field could all be millionaires. Soccer is now a gold mine, and any footballer who rises above his peers, in terms of capabilities of goal scoring, tendering the goal posts or positive contributions to other departments of the game, is readily baited with money. Sometimes, the staggering amounts are mind-blowing, and those bestowed with the favour simply live like Kings and Queens. They are enriched and they become very influential in society.
In using soccer to pitch thoughts on the theme, it is without any prejudice except the fact that it is the most visible and famous sport. Others are making waves in the lesser-known sports in equal or to greater magnitudes. One of the bravest and mightiest ascensions ever made by a sports personality is the climb made to the Presidency of Liberia by Former AC Milan star, George Oppon Weah who after chalking up some wonderful laurels in the new kingdom of millionaires, got the cutting edge, enough to catapult him to the vital political position in his country. French soccer star up to the mid-80s, Michel Platini, became President of European football.
American Boxer Floyd Mayweather has acquired a sea of cars, aircrafts, businesses and real estates, out of the pugilists sport. He is capable of doing anything with his money except feats of nature which are spiritual and God’s. For a period, the whole of Ghana paused to make time for television, anytime boxing icon Azumah Nelson had a bout in Las Vegas. The man who began life in the streets of Accra as coconut seller, was perhaps one of the foremost or few to own a Limousine in Ghana. Some of Ghana’s rich of different endeavours have the means to acquire Limos. Their absence on the roads could be interpreted to be sheer decision or not to make a show of them if it is part of their fleet. Azumah got it at the time Ghana had very few millionaires.
In the ilk of the aforementioned and others yet to be recognized, are the symbolism they represent for many others. Jamaica’s Usain Bolt. An Olympiad who long reigned as the world’s fastest person, with a record time in hundred metres race. Lionel Messi, Christiano Ronaldo, Neymar, Karim Benzima are among footballers who gallivant freedoms in the uncommon world. They luxuriate life with perks such as private yachts and jets, customized vehicles, mansions with palatial compounds and still could potentially earn juicy advertising contracts. Corporate world are in a chase after their personality brands.
When Ghana’s Asamoah Gyan launched his book, the venue was one of the cosiest, attended by society’s creme de la creme. This was a footballer who broke the nation’s heart, shooting wide a penalty kick that was on threshold of Hall of Fame, and to have pioneered Ghana and Africa into soccer world cup semis. This does not take anything from Asamoah Gyan, Ghana’s record goal scorer in international games. Gaffes in other professions had submerged some people; they were unable to swim through the opposite currents, the pushback.
Most sports personalities are thrust in spotlight giving them stardom and celebrity status. They are easily granted audience by Presidents and royals, and they hobnob within exclusive groups of achievers and/or rich people. A farmer who grows crops and husbands animals for meat protein, may probably get the rare chance of meeting a president, only once in blue moon, and this could be special events and not in the near casual sense.
Sports have now become the industry for only their kind. This might suggest a contradiction with the opening account of this passage, not in the broader sense where the statement situates. The booming sports business, for players, coaches, marketers, referees, kit producers, administrators, journalists, financiers and as tourist card, has served as recycle bin full of nectar for actors in the field, as they hit twilight. That is why past sportsmen and women easily find a job within the industry.
Many East African athletes gained easy nationality switches to countries with some of the most stringent immigration barricades. Sports put their destinies in their hands and granted them the ticket to places, which remain a fantasy or tantalizing mirage to crowds out there. These athletes become coaches when they retire. Studious and ebullient upstarts or youngsters, groping to find an early handle in life, and are passionate about sports, may take a cue from others to make giant leaps, that may land them in the other world. Not the world of our ancestors but a third world, the newest of the third worlds where milk and honey flows. The sports Eldorado.