World Cup notes: Nigerian president suspends team after poor performance
Reporting from Johannesburg and Cape Town, South Africa
And you thought George Steinbrenner was tough to please.
Goodluck Jonathan, the apparently ill-named president of Nigeria, has suspended his country’s national soccer team from international competition for two years after its poor performance in the World Cup.
Playing in the first World Cup on African soil, Nigeria was knocked out in the first round, losing twice and playing to a draw to finish last in its group.
Ima Niboro, the president’s senior communications adviser, said the move was intended to give Nigerian soccer a chance to reorganize, according to Reuters. Jonathan also plans to have the country’s World Cup organizing committed audited.
A spokesman for FIFA, world soccer’s governing body, said the group “had no official information from the Nigerian FA about this case specifically but in general FIFA’s policy towards political interference is well-known. Our statutes do not allow for any political interference.”
Nigeria was to begin its bid to qualify for the 2012 African Nations Cup finals in September against Madagascar.
The other football
More than 19 million people in the U.S. watched the Americans lose to Ghana, 2-1, in the second round Saturday, according to Nielsen statistics for ABC and Univision, both of whom broadcast the match. That makes it the most-watched soccer game in U.S. television history, beating out the 18.1 million who watched the 1994 World Cup final between Italy and Brazil.
However, that number pales in comparison to the record 106.5 million viewers who watched February’s Super Bowl on TV.
Just reward
South Africa has done so well hosting soccer’s World Cup — the largest single-sport event on Earth — the International Karate Organization has decided to bring its World Cup to the country in 2014.
Continental shift
As the only African team in the quarterfinals, Ghana can count on the lion’s share of the local support.
South African officials are distributing Ghanaian flags, and South Africa’s governing party has asked the team to change its nickname from Black Stars to Black Stars of Africa. Newspapers in Johannesburg, where Ghana plays Uruguay on Friday in the quarterfinals, have daily urged readers to back Ghana as well.
Gauteng province spokeswoman Nomazwe Ntlokwana says the decision to officially support Ghana is aimed at extending the buzz the competition has already generated in the country.
Ntlokwana says the Ghanaians carry the hopes of the continent on their shoulders.
But, hey, guys, no pressure.
Oh, so that’s the reason
Manouchehr Mottaki, foreign minister of Iran, says the U.S., England and France all deserved to be eliminated before the World Cup quarterfinals because the three countries supported a new round of sanctions against his nation over its nuclear program.
Iran, by the way, did not qualify for the World Cup, but fans there have been glued to the action on television.
Times wire services contributed to this report.
