This is Sportcenter

           There’s not really the financial infrastructure in this country to support much of a professional sports market.  Kids will run around after old tires, and young men play soccer at some local dirt fields in town.  (Young women would almost never play.)

But most people are farmers, and simply don’t have the disposable income (or national awareness) to value watching sports.  During the World Cup, I tried to make conversation by chatting with patients about the World Cup and got a whole bunch of blank stares.  Our hospital employees tend to be a little more interested in spectator sports… soccer is of the most interest (including the European leagues), but I’ve also seen people tuned in to traditional wrestling.

As a result, the country really only has a semi-professional domestic soccer league.  The National soccer team has never qualified for the World Cup Finals… indeed, since the African Cup Finals were established in 1957, our team has never made it past the qualification stage in this once-every-two-year event.

Until yesterday!  In case you missed it on Sportcenter, our team survived a 43 team field to make it into the 16 team Finals for the first... time... ever!  Actually, when a friend and I inquired about the team’s score in-town yesterday, we grimaced to discover that they had lost, and so weren’t qualifying… but thanks to an odd three way tie-breaker situation, they backed into a spot.  Yeah!