Sports

AFCON 2025 Observatory* *Notes from Morocco — Survival, Swagger, and Shared Emotion

Published by Akinwale Fakinlede on December 23rd, 2025.

*AFCON 2025 Observatory*

*Notes from Morocco — Survival, Swagger, and Shared Emotion*

Welcome to my AFCON 2025 Observatory, written from Morocco — host of the tournament and a country that curiously feels Arab, African, Mediterranean, and almost European all at once. Morocco is not just staging football; it is staging identity, memory, and ambition.

Morocco has done this before. In Africa Cup of Nations 1988, tagged Maroc ’88, Nigeria fell heartbreakingly to Cameroon in the final. For many Nigerians, that night remains unfinished business — sealed forever by Henry Nwosu’s disallowed goal, a moment that still lives in oral football folklore.
Now, decades later, I am here again — this time to support our beloved Nigeria Super Eagles — and to document, notebook in hand, the behind-the-scenes cultural story of AFCON 2025 over the next ten days.
Welcome to my Observatory.

*Survival, Swagger, and Shared Emotion:The Culture That Drives Nigerian Football*

Culture is not decoration; it is instruction.
It tells people how to endure, how to resist, how to hope, and how to dream. It shapes politics, art, morality — and football, the world’s most powerful cultural language.
Few artists captured this truth as sharply as Fela Anikulapo Kuti, especially in his iconic album Teachers Don’t Teach Me Nonsense.
The album is not merely protest music; it is a cultural manifesto. Fela interrogates how societies reproduce obedience, normalize authority, and punish truth when education disconnects knowledge from courage and justice.
Football does the same work — without microphones.
Where culture is bold, football becomes expressive.
Where culture is cautious, football becomes restrained.
Where culture resists, football turns into poetry and protest.
To understand Teachers Don’t Teach Me Nonsense is also to understand football as a classroom without walls — where culture is the teacher and the pitch is the blackboard.

*Football as Culture, Not Just Sport*
Nigerian football is not primarily driven by infrastructure, tactics, or long-term planning. It is driven by lived reality — survival instincts, improvisation, joy, and storytelling.
Football in Nigeria is not merely played.
It is felt.

*Survival Before Style*
In Nigeria, life teaches resilience before refinement — and football mirrors this truth.
Fans forgive ugly wins.
They excuse chaos.
They tolerate technical errors.
What they never forgive is surrender.
The Super Eagles are most loved not when they are flawless, but when they are defiant. Football is seen as endurance, not aesthetics.
The first Nigerian football question is simple:
Can you survive this match?

*Street Football: Improvisation as Intelligence*
Most Nigerian footballers are shaped not by academies, but by the street — dusty pitches, tight spaces, and unregulated chaos.
Street football teaches:
Speed of thought under pressure
Confidence in confinement
Creativity without permission
From this world emerged Jay-Jay Okocha — whose flair was not indulgence, but identity. His dribbles were declarations of freedom.
In Nigerian football culture, flair is not excess.
It is humanity.
Joy as Resistance
In a society familiar with hardship, joy becomes rebellion.
Goals are danced.
Victories are sung.
Stadiums become carnivals.
Nothing captures this better than Rashidi Yekini clutching the net at the 1994 World Cup — a scream of release carrying decades of frustration and hope.
In Nigeria, football joy is never just about football.
It is proof that happiness is still possible.

*Trust in Individuals Over Systems*
Nigeria’s fragile institutions have shaped a cultural instinct:
Trust people, not systems.
This instinct lives on the pitch:
The winger who can change everything
The striker who can rescue a nation
The moment of brilliance that overrides planning
Rigid systems feel alien when they suppress expression. When structure fails — as life often does — human genius must intervene.
This belief explains both Nigeria’s breathtaking highs and its painful inconsistencies.

*Football as Oral Storytelling*
Nigeria is an oral society. History survives in stories, arguments, songs, and exaggeration. Football follows the same tradition.
Matches are not archived — they are retold:
In homes
In viewing centres
In motor parks and beer parlours
A missed chance becomes folklore.
A refereeing injustice becomes legend.
A heroic performance becomes inheritance.
Nigerian football lives not in record books, but in memory.

*Emotional Volatility as Identity*
Nigerian football mirrors the national psyche:
Hope rises fast
Anger erupts suddenly
Love runs deep
When the Super Eagles win, it feels like national validation.
When they lose, it feels familiar — another broken promise.
The pitch becomes Nigeria itself:
Gifted. Chaotic. Joyful. Frustrating. Alive.

*Conclusion*
Nigerian football is not about perfection or control.
It is about survival over polish, joy over rigidity, and human brilliance over systems.
It is football played with:
The instincts of the street
The rhythm of music
The emotional weight of a nation that refuses to give up
Like Teachers Don’t Teach Me Nonsense, Nigerian football teaches without classrooms — telling the Nigerian story again and again.
I am here in Morocco to learn what Nigerian football will teach us this time.
May it teach better than it did in Africa Cup of Nations 2023.

*Sola Fanawopo Chairman Osun Football Association writes from Morrocco*