HARARE, July 1 (Xinhua) -- Many Zimbabweans have been left dejected following the elimination of all the five African teams that participated in the on-going FIFA World Cup soccer tournament in Brazil.
Zimbabweans, though their national team did not qualify for the World Cup finals, had high hopes that for once, Africa would proceed beyond the knockout stage but this was not to be as Cameroon, Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire became the first casualties in the group stage, before Algeria and Nigeria also fell by the wayside in the second round of the tournament.
A Zimbabwean soccer lover based in Cairo, Egypt, posted on her Facebook page late Monday night that she could not bear to see the last African representative - Algeria - being shown the door to the next plane back home.
"Gunite fellow soccer lovers, I'm not strong enough to watch my last representative in this World Cup sent packing. So long!" she said.
She queried why Africa could not do well at the World Cup yet it provided many players who improved the game in various leagues around the world.
Her dejection was shared by many others who had rallied behind the two remaining African teams with a passion that equaled their support for their own national team but were left dumbfounded when Nigeria crashed out Monday night, followed soon afterwards by Algeria after defeats by France and Germany respectively.
"We had high hopes for Africa this time around and I had even tipped Cote d'Ivoire to go as far as the quarter-finals. But it looks like as a continent we still have a long way to go before we can compete with teams from Europe and South America," said Francis Chibwe.
And indeed Africa had high hopes. For the first time since the tournament began, Africa had more than one representative proceeding to the knock-out stage with Algeria and Nigeria. Other teams that had proceeded to this stage before are Ghana and Cameroon.
Nigerian Dele Botunde could at least find some cynical humor in the loss of his country's team in the own goal scored by captain Joseph Yobo to make the score-line 2-nil in favor of France.
"Joseph Yobo finally scored in the World Cup - though against his country! Hope he still celebrated his 100th cap!"
Back home in Zimbabwe, the disappointment is not so much that all the African teams have been booted out of the World Cup, but that they left sooner rather than later.
"We need to go as far as the quarter-finals, even the semi-finals. It would take a great miracle for an African team to win the World Cup, but there is no harm in proceeding as far as the semi-final stage," said Chris Matongo.
He added that many people would still watch the tournament and support some of the remaining teams.
"If you asked many people which teams they supported, they would have told you that they supported all the African teams plus other teams coming from different parts of the world," he said.
Still, it was a tournament with many intrigues. A witch-doctor in Ghana claimed that he had cursed Portugal star player Christiano Ronaldo so that he would miss out the tournament. Ironically, it was Ronaldo who scored the winning goal when the two sides met in the last game in their group, although he was clearly unfit.
Then there was a case of a Cameroonian player getting into a buffalo fight with a colleague; the Cameroonian team refusing to fly to Brazil before the issue of bonuses was resolved; the Ivorian President dispatching a special jet to Brazil laden with 3 million U.S. dollars for players after the team refused to train over the same issue of bonuses and two Ghana players being sent home for indiscipline.
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