ABSTRACT
Association football is a national pastime in many African countries. The popularity of the sport is such that one can reasonably argue that it is integrally linked to the cultural identity of the African continent. The game is played and cherished in all regions of Africa even though the iconic players that have made a global impact have come from West and North Africa. Yet for most African countries, football is a western sport that was only introduced in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The colonization of Africa and the subsequent settler communities introduced the game to African people who were keen to pick up the sport. Since its introduction by western settlers, soccer has been in an ongoing process of growth and development. The period when Africa was under colonial rule witnessed the laying of the foundations for the development of the sport. Some of the aspects that made the game to be embraced with ease by the African people include the following:
(1) Soccer was inexpensive requiring very little special equipment. The ball was also easy to substitute with an improvised one.
