There are a handful of goals that are universal, that resonate with almost everybody who follows the game. Diego Maradona scored two of them in the space of five minutes against England in the World Cup quarter-final in 1986 – goals much better remembered, in Argentina, in England, everywhere, than either of his brilliant goals in the semi-final or than any of the five goals in the final. What makes a goal indelible is far more to do with context and narrative than the quality of the strike or even the stage at which it is scored.
There are very few truly universal goals. How many, really, could you mention to a fan in Beijing or Baltimore, Jakarta or Johannesburg, in the realistic expectation they could describe it? Maybe it is a facet of ageing, but as the volume of football on television has increased, such strikes seem to have become fewer and further between.
Zinedine Zidane’s headbutt and, some way behind, Luis Suárez’s handball are probably the biggest World Cup moments of the past 20 years. Goals, it turns out, are overrated, but it may be that the most memorable in the World Cup in the 21st century was the first: Papa Bouba Diop’s winner for Senegal against France in the opening game of the 2002 finals.
Diop died last Sunday, four days after Maradona, aged 42. His passing was respectfully marked, and Ademola Lookman celebrated scoring for Fulham against Leicester with his Senegal No 19 shirt, but there was nothing like the same outpouring of emotion. Why would there be? Maradona was one of a handful of all-time greats; Diop was a popular and diligent midfielder for Fulham and Portsmouth. Even in that Senegal side in 2002, Diop was overshadowed by El-Hadji Diouf and Salif Diao. Yet he, too, had his moment.
Omar Daf catches Youri Djourkaeff in possession and slides a pass down the left for Diouf to chase. He beats a lunging Frank Leboeuf and cuts the ball back along the edge of the six-yard box. Diop arrives in front of Emmanuel Petit and although Fabien Barthez saves his initial shot the ball rebounds back to him as he slides towards the line, allowing him to hook it in as Bixente Lizerazu appeals vainly for offside. Diop is on his feet immediately, running to the corner flag, where he lays his shirt on the ground and orchestrates a dance around it.
That passage from Daf winning the ball to the celebration in the corner are, globally speaking, probably the most famous 20 seconds in Senegal’s history – not Senegalese football’s history, but the history of the nation. Ask somebody in Britain to name anyone from Senegal and while some may know the musician Youssou N’Dour, far more will be able to name Diouf or Diop – or, more recently, Sadio Mané.
For some players – Lionel Messi at times, for instance – that can become a terrible burden, but it’s also an extraordinary opportunity. It is easy, in the face of the vapid laughter of a million adverts and Fifa’s cant about the football family, to become cynical, but no cultural pursuit is so universal. (In 2002, without realising who he was until half-time, I sat next to N’Dour during Senegal’s Cup of Nations quarter-final against DR Congo in Mali, exchanging the odd polite comment about the football.)
Diop was born in Rufisque, once a thriving port but now run-down and subsumed into Dakar. At 18, he started playing in the Senegalese top flight. At 21, he secured a move to Switzerland, fulfilling the dream of a lucrative European move. In January 2002, just after joining Lens, he was part of the Senegal squad at the Africa Cup of Nations.
There were already whispers this was a special side. They kept themselves apart, booking out a small hotel while every other side based in Bamako, Mali’s capital, stayed in the huge concrete Hôtel L’Amitié. There was a mood about them that is particular to a national side tasting significant success for the first time, or for the first time in a long while, at least: a mixture of excitement, pride and disbelief.
While those in the hotel seemed stuck on the familiar players’ treadmill of bedroom-dining room-training, Senegal’s players relaxed in the garden. They were probably the best side at the tournament, but lost on penalties in the final to Cameroon.
Diouf, also at Lens, was the ebullient and charismatic face of the squad, but Diop was there in the background. When the left-back Habib Beye described him as a giant it wasn’t just his physique he was talking about. The defender Alassane N’Dour, another member of the squad, described Diop as “a partner, a role model, a friend, a brother and a patriot”, as though being “a fantastic and extraordinary player” was incidental.
But Diop was a fine player, so influential that, by 2008, Tom Vernon, who ran an academy near Accra in Ghana, was complaining of the “Papa Bouba Diop template”, of European clubs coming to west Africa only interested in signing defensive midfielders in his image, just as they had once gone to South America to sign No 10s.
The irony is that a player so adept at breaking up opposing attacks should be most famous for a goal he scored. To those who wanted to see it, there was symbolism in a winner against the former colonial master – although there was no animosity: 21 of Senegal’s 23-man squad had played in France and most said they happily supported France in tournaments they were not involved in. More immediately relevant was it was the goal that beat the world and European champions, a goal that made people, perhaps for the first time, take notice of Senegal.
There, again, the breadth of the World Cup’s appeal is made clear. The last week of last month was marked by the deaths of two players from very different but similarly humble backgrounds, who conditioned how the rest of the world regarded their nation.
from Football | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2JQOkAf
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