Côte d’Ivoire … I’m hooked. World Cup Fever is real and the Elephants of Ivory Coast hooked me right from the start. I love most everything about the World Cup… except the exaggerated injuries/stalling (gamesmanship?) and the inane reality that only the center official knows exactly when the game will end.
I watched the Ivory Coast team warm up in its electrifying orange and green aloha-ish shirts and immediately bought one online (it includes the elephant logo). I watched the joy and delight the team and its fans displayed throughout their World Cup experience. Similar to many other teams and crazed fans, of course, but simply pleasant, not fanatical.
The fans traipsed from Philadelphia to Toronto and Dallas, happily sharing their esprit de corps and West African pride wherever they went. The team lost in the round of 32 to Norway, but this was Côte d’Ivoire’s first squad to get through the group stage. Having forwards like Yan Diomandeand Nicolas Pépé surely helped (those two each have transfer market valuations of about $150 million!). Finding a new team to root for in the midst of the usual, favored suspects battling for the World Cup crown just adds to the fun while enjoying this quadrennial event, an event that will be watched during its duration by a staggering 5.8 billion people worldwide.
Hawai`i sports fans loves underdogs; we often feel that our squads (in many sports) are perennial underdogs against acknowledged powerhouses. While underrepresented in the stands by their small Coterie of Cote-ees (‘tis a long, costly trip from Abidjan and Yamoussoukro in Cote d’Ivoire to North America), indomitable, happy faces from West Africa beamed throughout Les Éléphants’ presence at this wondrous spectacle. How can you not love a charismatic team and fan base that often includes a percussion band mimicking elephant noises in the stands?!
You wanna talk about a melting pot? Cote d’Ivoire has 32-million people incorporating 60 ethnic groups and over 70 indigenous languages. Anecdotally, only soccer brings everyone together. This team and its fans are famous for morphing bad fortune (i.e.-losing) into joking and humble amusement, a far cry from some over-exuberant soccer souls who follow “the beautiful game” as melodrama, a life and death struggle.
I discovered Ivory Coast’s intriguing, homegrown zouglou music along the way… always fun to learn something new! Cote d’Ivoire spiced up the worldwide bouillabaisse that is this fútbol phenomenon.
Think about it…