Missing the World Cup

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 12 July 2016

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Ghana's World Cup boycott of 1966 was a protest at the number of places at the World Cup given by FIFA to Africa. It is a story of politics, decolonisation and pan-Africanism.

African champions in 1963 and 1965, and Olympic quarter-finalists in 1964, Ghana would have been the favourites to qualify for England – but the team, nicknamed the Black Stars, never got their chance. Missing the World Cup meets two players who regret their World Cup absence to this day – Osei Kofi and former team-mate Kofi Pare – and those close to the key agitators of the boycott, with another Ghanaian, Ohene Djan, eloquently leading the protest alongside the remarkable Ethiopian Yidnekatchew Tessema, a onetime Confederation of African Football president who was also a star player, coach and administrator.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Here at Wembley Stadium 50 years ago, England hosted and won its first and only World Cup.
0:11.0	I am very pleased that this country is acting as host for the final
0:19.6	phases of the World Cup. I welcome all our visitors and feel sure that we shall be seeing
0:28.4	some fine football. It now gives me great pleasure to declare open the eighth world football championships.
0:37.0	The 19th World Football Championships. The 1966 tournament is arguably most famous for England's controversial goal in the final.
0:50.6	Did it cross the line?
0:52.0	Did it not? there were also the brilliant
0:55.1	displays of Portugal's African-born star Eusebio but there is a key aspect that
1:00.0	has been largely overlooked it was the only World Cup in history to have been
1:04.8	boycotted by an entire continent and that continent was Africa. But the names of
1:11.1	the two men who led an ultimately successful fight for fairer representation at football's top table have long been forgotten.
1:19.0	I'm Piers Edwards and on missing the World Cup on the BBC I'll be delving into
1:25.0	football history and remembering the legacy of these men. Garners Ahinee Jan and
1:30.7	the Ethiopian Tessama Yiddacachu.
1:34.0	Well, it is one of the untold stories in World Cup history
1:38.0	that the 16 teams didn't include an African team.
1:41.0	And when you use the word boycott people express surprise
1:44.4	because it hasn't been widely told. Nobody thought about Africa let's be
1:49.9	really brutally frank about this. People did not know anything about what was
1:54.6	going on in Africa. It was behind the scenes stuff.
1:59.6	In many ways the story starts here on the shores of the Atlantic in West Africa on the Sun
2:06.2	Kiss streets of the Ghanaian capital Accraub. For in January 1964 FIFA ruled that of the 16 teams going to the World Cup in England, 10 should
	...

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