{"id":41975,"date":"2024-05-03T11:38:49","date_gmt":"2024-05-03T11:38:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/05\/03\/a-race-the-whole-world-is-watching-2\/"},"modified":"2024-05-03T11:38:49","modified_gmt":"2024-05-03T11:38:49","slug":"a-race-the-whole-world-is-watching-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/05\/03\/a-race-the-whole-world-is-watching-2\/","title":{"rendered":"A Race the Whole World Is Watching"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Mayowa Adeshina should, really, be at work. It is the middle of Sunday afternoon, and he has not yet finished his shift at the barbershop. He is here, clad in a red-and-white Arsenal jersey, only by the good grace of his boss. Well, grace is one word. Resignation is another. \u201cI took a break for the love of the game,\u201d Mr. Adeshina said. \u201cThe manager knows this. He\u2019s not new to the routine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many West Africans live to the rhythm of European soccer, with mostly male crowds massing outside bars, hair salons, street restaurants \u2014 any establishment, ultimately, with a screen \u2014 to watch idols playing thousands of miles away. Real Madrid, Barcelona and Paris St.-Germain all have considerable followings in the region, but in Nigeria, nothing matches the appeal of the Premier League.<\/p>\n

On game days, fans of all stripes flock to viewing centers \u2014 street venues equipped with a few screens, a jigsaw puzzle of wooden benches, a thicket of wires and a canopy to block out the sun and reduce the glare \u2014 like the one Mr. Adeshina and his friends descended on to take in his beloved Arsenal\u2019s meeting with Tottenham Hotspur.<\/p>\n

Mr. Adeshina became an Arsenal fan in the late 1990s, when Nigerian cable channels first began broadcasting the Premier League. His older brother instructed him on which team he should support, at a time when Nwankwo Kanu, one of Nigeria\u2019s greatest stars, was a fixture in the team\u2019s lineup.<\/p>\n

If anything, though, Mr. Adeshina says his connection to the team is even deeper now. Arsenal\u2019s academy is stacked with English prospects of Nigerian ancestry. One of the club\u2019s brightest stars, Bukayo Saka, grew up in a Nigerian family in London. \u201cHe\u2019s Yoruba, I\u2019m Yoruba,\u201d Mr. Adeshina said, in a tone rather softer than that with which he celebrated his idol\u2019s first-half goal against Spurs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Mayowa Adeshina should, really, be at work. It is the middle of Sunday afternoon, and he has not yet finished his shift at the barbershop. He is here, clad in a red-and-white Arsenal jersey, only by the good grace of his boss. Well, grace is one word. Resignation is another. \u201cI took a break for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41976,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/05\/01\/multimedia\/01premierleague-global-01-fzcg\/01premierleague-global-01-fzcg-facebookJumbo.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1593,10955,1052],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41975"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41975"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41977,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41975\/revisions\/41977"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}