There’s no one way to describe Africa’s soccer teams

On June 21, Ghana and Germany played out a thrilling match, ending in a 2-2 draw thanks to a late equalizer from Germany striker Miroslav Klose. When asked for his input on the result, ESPN analyst and former Germany captain Michael Ballack replied with “typical African team” followed by “pace, powerful, physical” and a list of other adjectives one might find huddled together in a thesaurus.

Fellow analyst Alexi Lalas echoed Ballack’s sentiments, just as he had in the pregame, the duo carefully explaining that Ghana were tactically naive and undisciplined, that it was their athleticism that had allowed them to compete against the Germans.

The portrait of African teams as physical specimens who are, at best, tactically bemused is hardly unique to Lalas and Ballack. They reflect instead a deep current of ignorance that has been around for far too long, a sinister rewording of the heinous stereotypes that Africans or men with African ancestry are strong, fast and tall, but lacking in intelligence. It’s another facet of the deep-seated, racist portrayal of African athletes that leads to them being regularly compared to animals while their white counterparts, no matter how stylistically similar, are not.

This portrait influences coverage of not just Ghana but the entire African representation at the World Cup. In the Toronto Sun, Kurtis Larson takes a very decisive stance against African teams in the World Cup. In it, he states, after condemning Yaya Toure’s transparent attempts to secure a raise from Manchester City:

Speaking of sickening, welcome to the grossly convoluted Confederation of African Football (CAF), a group of teams that continues to disappoint every four years.

He illustrates this disappointment as follows: “Following the Ivory Coast’s 2-1 loss to Colombia on Thursday, CAF sides -- Nigeria, Algeria, Ghana and Cameroon -- are a combined 1-5-1, including an embarrassing performance from Cameroon here in the jungle Wednesday night.” And then he goes after the players on a personal level: “More disgraceful, however, are many of the players themselves.”

Yaya Touré, Photo credit: Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images

His suggestion that Yaya Toure is displaying unprecedented levels of greed looks strange when you compare Toure’s conduct to that of virtually every other footballer on the planet. Wayne Rooney, definitely not African but playing for a disappointing team regardless, has handed in two transfer requests that were retracted when he was rewarded with massive contracts; he’s currently making £300,000 per week as the result of his machinations. Cristiano Ronaldo, definitely not African but playing for a disappointing team regardless, went through months of pouting in the 2012/13 season, only rediscovering his joy for football after becoming the highest-paid player in the world. Painting greed and selfishness as somehow specific to Yaya Toure is absurd.

Larson writes about the Cameroonians refusing to board their plane to Brazil for the tournament until they received their bonuses first, painting them as greedy and selfish, neglecting the Cameroon Football Association’s long history of failing to pay their players, most of whom are not receiving anything like their European or South American counterparts at club level. Cameroon’s players are an easy target for unsubtle minds.

Yet again describing CAF as “a federation full of cry babies, selfishness and alleged cheats,” Larson goes on to use Alex Song’s elbow on Mario Mandzukic as a testament to the lack of discipline apparently so rife in African teams. While it’s undoubtedly true that some African players are deficient in this regard, we’ve seen with other incidents in this World Cup that a lack of control is hardly as unique to the continent as portrayed.

According to FIFA’s website, Uruguay, definitely not African, topped the charts in fouls conceded, yellow cards issued and red cards issued even before the knockout rounds started. At the end of group play, they were followed in the fouls chart by Ecuador, then Croatia, before the first African team, Cameroon, showed up. The Indomitable Lions were succeeded by Italy, Portugal, Honduras and Greece. The Ivory Coast were ninth; 10 teams separated them from Nigeria.

African teams, to Larson -- and to many other observers besides -- are difficult to handle: “It’s moments of individual athleticism, mixed with bizarre decision-making and disorganization -- a manager’s worst nightmare.” The portrayal of Africans as athletic, talented bodies with unfortunately limited minds has reared its head once more.

It’s impossible to dismiss this stereotyping as being the antiquated ideas of a few individuals. Every single time African teams and players are playing, that’s how they’re described. There are, of course, African players notable for strength and speed, much as there are European and South American stars who show the same attributes. But this is a continent that’s produced the disciplined, tactical play of John Obi Mikel, the extraordinarily intelligent runs of Samuel Eto’o in his prime, the silky touch of Didier Drogba and, at least in Algeria’s case, a tactically smart, versatile side capable of playing in a variety of different styles. There’s no one way to describe African players and teams other than “African,” and to think otherwise is to betray a deep and profoundly lazy ignorance of those involved.