How Senegal defied Polska numbers

MOSCOW.

Like with all games, the train ride to Spartak Stadium was inundated with rival fans chanting and singing as they geared themselves up for the match.
Except that the ratio of Poles to Senegalese was 1000 to 10. The green of Senegal could barely be seen, let alone noises emanating from their support.
The only colour was red and blue, the colours of Poland. Chants of ‘Polska, Polska Polska’ were raining in the train and they increased as they train stops reduced to Spartak Stadium.
But the game of football pays no respect to the size of economy, population, or origin.
Once the Bahrain official Nawaf Shukralla started the game, it was 11 Senegalese against 11 Poles.
The Poles made the far greater noise in a match that looked like it was being played in Warsaw, the Polish capital, but once Senegal captained by Liverpool star Sadio Mane took the sting out of the game by stifling Robert Lewandowski, the more fancied European side knew this would be a long evening.
That is the beauty of football; the Poles had everything in their favour going into the game but the game is played on the pitch and nowhere else.
They have a population of 40 million people compared to Senegal’s 16 million, boast of a GDP per capita of $31,430 which is much higher than the $2,733 on Aliou Cisse’s side and lastly are ranked 8th by Fifa against the 27th placing of the African team.
In fact until the 87th minute when West Bromwich Albion midfielder Grzegorz Kyychowiak powered home a header to turn the Lions of Teranga into a pack of 11 nerves, Senegal had looked comfortable.
Victory for Africa
They cleared their lines well and maintained a defensive cohesion upon which they frustrated their opponents and punished two mistakes.
For Cisse, the victory was not for his country. It was “for Africa,” he observed. “Senegal represents the whole of Africa, I can guarantee that.”
Cisse would know best for he remembers how the African continent threw its weight behind the legendary side of 2002 that reached the quarterfinals at the edition hosted by South Korea and Japan.
Cisse acknowledged that while Poland had fans in Spartak Stadium, the support for his team from thousands of miles away in Africa was way superior. And the knowledge of that was the fuel that drove them to upsetting Lewandowski and company.
At full time the entire Senegal squad went to acknowledge the two small pockets of fans who cheered them - they were sat opposite one another.
But at the back of their minds they knew that this was a result that lifted the continent and has given them a very decent shot at making the second round.

WORLD CUP TITBITS

Russian spellings
On my accreditation tag, the name Mark Namanya is spelt HAMAHя Mapk. God knows what that means but apparently, it is how my name is written in the national language here. Almost everything is in Russian, as you would expect. Here in MOCKBa (Moscow), tongue-twisting characters are just about everywhere. Well, they aren’t exactly that, they are Russian language. On the train station, I and a couple of friends have learnt that to get to our apartment, we must alight from Юго-Западная (Yugo Zapadnaya) station. Inside the shopping Malls, road signs and on the motorways, the use of Russian is conspicuous. The only thing left for me is to learn how to pronounce my name HAMAHя Mapk.
Jersey swaps
The tradition lives on. Throughout the last editions of the World Cup, it is fashionable for football fans and tourists to swap their national soccer team shirts. In fact there are some fans who fly from anywhere to go to the World Cup to leave with as many different shirts as they can gather. After the Poland-Senegal match at Spartak Stadium, there was an Argentine and Mexican who stood at the exit beckoning to whoever was keen on trading Polish or Senegalese tops for their countries’ shirts. The process tends to be routine once a team is eliminated and its fans are planning their flights back home.

Used tickets
The sale of World Cup tickets is very illegal at football stadiums. In fact if caught, it is a criminal offence ever since Fifa streamlined the process of how to acquire tickets to the greatest show on earth. But there are other fans who pitch camp outside World Cup stadiums to demand for used tickets at every single game. But they are not always successful as fans many a time hold onto them as souvenirs from the competition. You can be sure that none of my World Cup tickets will be given away. I still have my 2010 World Cup ticket after all.

Cecilia Pub
Cecilia Pub on the base of the apartment building where I’m staying is a comfortable, British-style watering hole with an ambience that makes it the most ideal to enjoy a World Cup match. Everything goes and fans of all races, sex and class scream themselves silly when a goal is scored. On Tuesday night when Russia took Egypt to school to all but guarantee their place at the next round, pandemonium broke out as fans celebrated their historic advancement. There was such a deafening uproar that by the time I left, my head was dizzy. Ohh…..and the patron next to us offered to settle 15% of my bill because ‘you are such a nice guy’. Perhaps he had been impressed with the way I celebrated every Russia goal. Truth is I had been cheering Egypt deep down but when in Rome, ……….

*The writer is Monitor Publications’ Sports Editor