Thanks to #Eusébio, it’s common for European nations’ football fortunes to depend on African players today
▻http://africasacountry.com/thanks-to-eusebio-its-common-for-european-nations-football-fortunes
Historian Eric Hobsbawn once wrote of the centrality of national soccer teams to national identity in Europe, that “the imagined community of millions seems more real as a team of eleven named people.” And that allows it to represent a more inclusive image of the national idea, as in the case of France’s 1998 World Cup victory with a team dominated by black and Arab players. But it was Eusébio and his Mozambican, Cape Verdean and Angolan teammates that first gave a European country a different image of itself on the football field.