1 African Footballing Fantasies: the (Dangerous) Call of Europe in Francisco Zamora’s The Kaduna Alligator. Maurice O’Connor University of Cádiz The Ball no Question makes of Ayes and Noes, But Right or Left, as strikes the Player, goes; And He that toss’d Thee down into the Field, He knows about it all–HE knows! (Omar Khayyam) 1 These verses are taken from the poem Rubáiyát, written by the 11 th century poet, mathematician and astronomer, Omar Khayyam. The action describes a polo match and, in the Persian cosmos, the sport was considered to be both a ‘game of kings’ and an allegory on life itself. Sporting events, wherever they may be staged, have always struck a marked resonance within the collective unconscious, and can be viewed as metonymic re-enactments of both national struggles and long-standing communal rivalry. Soccer, which was first codified in London in 1863 so as to give a more cohesive presence to English public school and university football, has come to embody this ritualised phenomenon. These chauvinistic considerations aside, the French novelist and philosopher, Albert Camus, famously preferred a football game over any kind of theatre, considering the former to embody the most basic and fundamental humanistic values such as morality, camaraderie, fair play, courage and loyalty. No wonder that this potent mix of bonding and belonging has made football a global presence, with the massive amounts of cash being pumped into the sport (in Europe alone the industry is