Welcome, everybody to soccer 101.

My name is Taylor Rockwell, and I am very excited to be here today to talk about a topical topic that we will attempt to make Evergreen.

But it's the Africa Cup of Nations.

Graham Ruffin, are you excited both for this conversation and for the tournament to begin?

Hello, Taylor Rockwell. Yes, I am very excited for Afcon.

I think Afcon is a great tournament.

There's no denying. There's a layer

of kind of curiosity, if that's the right word, that isn't always delved into by Western media

outlets. So we'll do a bit of that, hopefully, on this episode. We will. And we'll talk maybe

about why that's the case and the way the tournament gets covered.

But first, let's talk about the tournament itself.

Afcon, Africa, Cup of Nations, has been around for a good chunk of time.

But learning about the history of the tournament was pretty interesting because I don't think I knew a lot about CAF, the African Federation.

I certainly didn't know the founding members. Are you

familiar? The four countries, you mean, that were, yeah, so it is Egypt, it is South Africa.

Yeah. It's somewhere in my notes here. So it's Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, South Africa.

South Africa were meant to take part

in the first Afcon in 1957, but refused to field a mixed race team due to apartheid and were

suspended and banned from that tournament. But those were the first four founding members.

Yep. And then, I don't know if they were banned from that point on, but definitely banned until

1996 when they are 94 and then they host in 96.

But I would say that's a justifiable ban.

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