England-Senegal and the ndepp rite

In rich and globalized football of which Qatar 2022 is the apotheosis, one challenge between England and Senegal it has a very special charm. As always when the outsiders. And this year there are several in the round of 16: from Australia to South Korea, from Morocco to Senegal, the only representatives of Africa still in the game. When David and Goliath challenge each other, I don’t know why, but I like to think that due to some supernatural intervention, it’s always the weakest who has to prevail. Ok, in this case the “little” Davide is represented by six-foot-tall marcantoni for 80 kilos of muscle and power, but that’s it: the favorites are definitely the English. Even for the final victory. Meanwhile, the national team of the Three Lions will have to beat those of Taranga. And we will see some good ones.

Senegalese players know English football well: most of them play in England. In addition to captain Kalidou Koulibaly, there are ten players involved in English teams. A colonization on the contrary, one might say. Games like this will always be symbolic. England and France, in Senegal, between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries fought over different places: from Gorèe taken first by the English and then by the French, in Saint-Louis.

My friend Babakar at the University filled me with books and stories of his land narrated by his fellow countrymen. He told me that in the village of Yoff, in Senegal, a cult of possession, the ndepp, is practiced, a sort of mysterious approach to the animistic version of the world which, through the secrets of traditional practices, “involves liberating dances to the obsessive sound of drums, convulsive trances and ablutions”. During the rites it can happen that one of the invoked spirits invests the occasional spectator, destabilizing him deeply.

Also on 31 May 2002, at the World Cup in Korea and Japan, Senegal played a match with a strong symbolic value: that time with France. Game without history, they said. Even the blues were candidates for the final victory. To be clear: it was the France of Djorkaëff, Henry, Treseguet, Vieirà, Thuram, Zidane. But the imponderable forces evoked by the leather ball had something different in mind: at half an hour Djouf escaped to the left and put it in the middle low shot. Goalkeeper Barthez took it somewhat by favoring the lion king paw of Papa Boupa Diop who threw it inside. At that moment the world was a spectator of a ritual near the corner flag where the player placed his shirt with the number 19 on the ground like a relic to then start an extraordinary, iconic, unimaginable tribal ritual. The result did not change and Senegal made it to the quarter-finals, thrilling the world of football and garnering the sympathy and admiration of fans at all latitudes.

The memory of that match should make the English tremble. Certainly together with the ndepp. Because, beyond logic, I like to think that the 19 written in felt-tip pen by Koulibaly on his captain armband in the match against Ecuador was not just a tribute to the hero of a people who surrendered to ALS at 42 precisely on November 29, 2020, but a way to evoke its warrior spirit and support. Together with that of Bruno Metzu, the coach of that historic team who died in 2013 at the age of 59, who I’m sure will support his lions.

On the other hand, poor Sadio Mané, injured, unfortunately won’t be able to even try to throw the stone from the slingshot of his feet. I see him reciting the words of the greatest African poet (and president of Senegal for two decades) Léopold Sédar Senghor watching his companions from afar, at the bottom of his telescope as we watch the fishermen with the net / the fishermen who sing together, they move rhythmically / parallel and asymmetrical, […] in the prodigious sea, where all the fish flourish. // […] their tense muscles are rhythmic: beautiful as basalt statues. / To the play of muscles in joy, in the legs in the breasts / That pure passions burn, fire of twigs at night / / In the transparent beauty of the amber bodies of dark bronze, / of the hearts of musk.

Although it is thought that in the ndepp rite white skin is naturally less vulnerable to the influences of the most dangerous African spirits, it is known that this has already happened to quite a few Westerners. Who knows it won’t happen again.