 Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo poses with the Elephants |
They say that failure is an orphan but success has many parents.
In the coming months, Ghana, Togo, Angola and the Ivory Coast will all discover just why the World Cup is a magnet for glory hunters.
Indeed, the scourge of the Johnny-come-latelies is one of the greatest challenges facing Africa's four World Cup debutants.
People with a hitherto unknown passion for football, especially politicians, will come out of the woodworks pledging to help their respective teams do well in Germany next year.
The four newcomers will also have to deal with many former players and coaches who, prior to World Cup qualification, had all but turned their backs on anything that reminded them of football.
Companies and business tycoons who once vowed never to touch football with a bargepole are going to experience Damascus-style conversions and declare their 'commitment to the national sport'.
This is by no means a uniquely African phenomenon but it is more pronounced in a continent where football continues to play a major role in helping to boost the popularity of politicians and their cronies.
There are few things in Africa that can provide the same kind of visibility as football, particularly when the national team is competing on a stage as big as the World Cup finals.
In the Ivory Coast, President Laurent Gbagbo presented each of the victorious Elephants squad with a house worth some US$52,000 and the Knight of the National Order, one of the country's most prestigious awards.
Meanwhile, Togolese President Faure Gnassingbe declared a national holiday for Monday 10 October in honour of the Hawks' World Cup success twenty-four hours after their qualification.
In giving his people a day off, President Gnassingbe was continuing a long and not always honourable tradition, but I'm sure it was an act that won him many new supporters.
But it is precisely this sort of thing that could open the door for politicians with dubious football credentials and their hangers-on to hijack the achievements of the Hawks for their own ends.
 President Faure Gnassingbe declared a public holiday after Togo's success |
Cameroon and Nigeria have found - to their considerable cost both on and off the pitch - that qualifying for the World Cup can easily turn from a blessing into a curse of biblical proportions.
When 'long-standing' football fans nobody knew about suddenly fall from the sky, they invariably offer something that would appear to be of benefit to the team as it prepares to take on the world.
It could be a cash injection, a sponsorship deal or they may call into question the team's training facilities and bonuses.
There are some who will go one step further and offer to pay for a better coach than the one who qualified the team!
True to form, they pledge to do something about all these things in return for, yes, you guessed it - a seat or two on the World Cup plane!
The bottom line is that these people see football as a way of gaining the respect they find hard to come by in other spheres of life.
Let us hope that someone will have the guts to show them a straight red card when they try and jump on to the World Cup bandwagon.
MMIX
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