The game seems simple enough. Two teams. 11 people. 1 referee and a field split in half. And the aim, even simpler, get the ball in the back of the net.

But there’s also Fifa- and  commercialisation and the institutinalisation. And nation wars and politics. And off-side rules: women in football. And regulation soccer balls and balls made of stuffed plastic bags.  There are soccer academies and stadia as monuments. And unlevel playing fields and Celebrity Superstar Soccer Player Saviours. There’s the game: two reams, 11 people, 1 ball in the back of the net. There are also the games played to maintain it.

In You Don’t Get Paid for Soccer in South Africa, The Chronic meets four players who have displayed healthy doses of both for the opportunity to don national colours and run the pitch for Banyana Banyana. According to members of the country’s national women’s squad, playing football at the highest level in South Africa requires as much patience as it does passion.

Every year, in an election you may have missed, Belgian football coaches and journalists vote for the best African player in the Belgian league. The most recent “Ebony Shoe” went to the Senegalese striker, Mbaye Leye, prompting a worldwide chorus of “Who?”

“Sportsmen born in Africa are born with a disadvantage. In our book, Soccernomics, the sports economist Stefan Szymanski and I stated a general rule of sport: poor countries are usually poor at sport. The few black African champions in international sport have been, for the most part, Kenyan and Ethiopian distance-runners – and running is probably the sport that typically requires the least resources. You don’t even need a pair of shoes.”

• Read Simon Kuper, co-author of Soccernomics, in Shift the Goalposts of Disadvantage

In Ready, Willing & Able, Lolade Adewuyi profiles one of the continent’s most successful football coaches – the Big Boss, as he is widely referred to – and considers the arguments for more faith, more respect and more investment in the abilities of home-grown trainers.

Shoeless and bible blacked, Sandile Dikeni recounts childhood kickabouts on uneven playing fields in the Karoo.

“When we formed Shoes Span, nobody had shoes.  The reason for our shoelessness was not a secret, it was simply varied.  Out of the team of eleven, nine thought that shoes were made for white boys.  And the nine also thought it was good that the remaining two had shoes that the parents in one instance vowed never to replace and in another, pledged strict control on. My shoes did not die a natural death but were kicked to death on imaginary footballs like stones, coke cans and some more stones.”

• Read Shoes

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