ABSTRACT
On 8 February 1957 representatives from Ethiopia, Sudan, Egypt and South Africa attended the rst meeting of the Confederation of African Football (CAF), held in Khartoum, Sudan. Before then, the development and di usion of football across the continent ‘was clearly rooted in the colonial experience’ (Darby, 2000: 73), facilitated through missionaries, colonial armies and the colonial state. Although tied to emergent nationalism, football and CAF membership were also vehicles for pan-Africanism in postcolonial Africa. Furthermore, CAF has had a contradictory relationship with global football. With a growing number of members, CAF has become the largest voting bloc within FIFA, leading the move to expel apartheid South Africa and wielding great in uence in the elections of FIFA presidents. However, Africa also remains at the margins of the global game. An African team has yet to reach the semi- nal of a World Cup, despite Pele’s assertion that an African side would win the tournament before the turn of the millennium. Most domestic leagues remain underfunded and struggle to retain their best players, while fans and players regularly buy into the idea that European football is the pinnacle of the game (Poli, 2006). The 2010 World Cup in South Africa, the rst on African soil, encapsulated such con icting power relations.
