Africa Cup Attack

Like all Europe's major football leagues, the German Bundesliga has a number of players competing in the Africa Cup of Nations in Angola. The first priority for clubs when the news of the attack broke was to contact their players and offer to fly them out of Africa.

Hanover, for example, were concerned about their Tunisian defender Karim Haggui.

"Karim told our sports directorship that he feels safe right now," Hanover spokesman Andreas Kundt told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper.

Three members of the Togolese delegation were killed on Friday when separatist rebels in an Angolan enclave opened fire on the team bus. A reserve goalkeeper had to be flown to South Africa for emergency treatment for life-threatening gunshot wounds.

The Togolese team subsequently quit the tournament and flew home.

"I was afraid for my life," Togolese defender Assimiou Toure, who plays for Bayer Leverkusen, told reporters. "All I could do was jump under my seat and pray."

Thus far, no African player has asked his German club to get him out of Angola. But the shooting has occasioned furious debate about both the Africa Cup and safety in general on the continent ahead of the world's premier soccer event.

Relative safety?

International football functionaries, from FIFA President Sepp Blatter on down, have been quick to offer assurances that the shooting in Angola did not mean that this summer's World Cup in South Africa would be unsafe.

"The measures taken for the Africa Cup are not comparable with those for a football World Cup, which are planned years in advance," German World Cup advisor Horst R. Schmidt told the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper.

Indeed, South Africa and Angola are very different countries. Still, some likely members of the German national team at the World Cup said they were worried.

"It's completely sick," Germany's top goalkeeper Rene Adler told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper. "I have to ask how they're going to ensure security at the World Cup. I'm sure we'll be safe as a team, but what about family members?"

Other team members had comparable reactions.

'When you hear something like that, you do a double take and start thinking," Germany midfielder Bastian Schweinsteiger told the SID sports news agency.

German coach Otto Pfister, who spent most of his career working in Africa and who coached the Togolese team at the 2006 World Cup, offered a more first-hand view. He said that the World Cup would not be especially risky but that different standards applied to Africa.

"The security measures are, of course, not comparable with those in Germany," Pfister said in an interview with SID. "In this area, just as in the economy, we're talking about developing countries. And the distances are enormous. How can they be expected to keep all of such vast distances completely under control?"

Hard choices

The attack has focused attention on a number of issues, both for football and society in general.

For instance, Pfister is among those who have criticized the Togolese decision to withdraw from the tournament, which was ordered by Togo's Prime Minister. He has said Togo's pull-out will only encourage extremist groups in Angola, and he fears that wrong precedents could be set.

"The Africa Cup is a spectacular event for Africans, one that's almost more important than the World Cup," Pfister told SID. "You can't cancel events like these. You quickly put yourself in a position where you can be blackmailed."

In the purely sporting realm, though, the attack has caused football managers outside Africa to question the Africa Cup. Clubs throughout Europe were never happy about being forced to allow their employees to take part in the biennial event, and Friday's incident has fuelled arguments that the rules need to be changed.

Borussia Dortmund sports director Michael Zorc says teams should have the right to make decisions based on players' safety.

"Until that becomes the case, we can't bring our players back because they would then be suspended," Zorc told the Frankfurter Allegeimeine Zeitung.

Stuttgart commercial manager Horst Heldt, whose defender Arthur Boka plays for Ivory Coast, feels much the same way.

"The ideal thing for me would be if Arthur could just come back," Heldt told the same paper.

Ultimately, the attack on Togo's national team is going to force everyone concerned to take a realistic look at where Africa and international football fit together.

FIFA's decision to award South Africa the World Cup was a bold and inclusive gesture, intended to signal that the world's poorest continent was a full-fledged member in the global soccer community.

Experts like Pfister know that there are risks attached to that decision, but argue that those risks should not be allowed to overshadow all other aspects of the world's biggest sporting event.

That will surely be one of the main topics of discussion for the duration of the Africa Cup and in the run-up to the World Cup in South Africa.

Author: Jefferson Chase
Editor: Michael Lawton