Popularity
The most popular sport in Mali is football (soccer), which rose to the level of national obsession when Mali was chosen to host the 2002 African Cup of Nations. Most towns have professional or semi-professional men's clubs which play in one national (professional) league and two regional (semi professional) leagues. While a majority of clubs are based in Bamako, the most popular teams nationally are Djoliba AC, Stade Malien, and Real Bamako, all based in the capitol.
People play football widely, with formal fields in almost every town of any size, and pickup games among children common in a country with few luxuries. Informal games are often played by youths using a bundle of rags as a ball.
Read more about this topic: Football In Mali
Famous quotes containing the word popularity:
“A more problematic example is the parallel between the increasingly abstract and insubstantial picture of the physical universe which modern physics has given us and the popularity of abstract and non-representational forms of art and poetry. In each case the representation of reality is increasingly removed from the picture which is immediately presented to us by our senses.”
—Harvey Brooks (b. 1915)
“In everything from athletic ability to popularity to looks, brains, and clothes, children rank themselves against others. At this age [7 and 8], children can tell you with amazing accuracy who has the coolest clothes, who tells the biggest lies, who is the best reader, who runs the fastest, and who is the most popular boy in the third grade.”
—Stanley I. Greenspan (20th century)
“The nation looked upon him as a deserter, and he shrunk into insignificancy and an earldom.... He was fixed in the house of lords, that hospital of incurables, and his retreat to popularity was cut off; for the confidence of the public, when once great and once lost, is never to be regained.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)