You may have noticed the competition that kicked off yesterday. What was once the African Cup of Nations is the MTN Africa Cup of Nations. MTN, in case you are wondering, is a South African telecommunications giant that obviously has an affinity with football. It also sponsors the MTN African Champions League and, in July 2006, it injected about £40 million to become a global sponsor of the 2010 World Cup.

In a sense, this competition could not have a more fitting sponsor because MTN’s slogan is “Everywhere you go”. Football in Africa really is “everywhere you go”. Europe may have invented it, South America may have raised it to high art, North America may learn to love it and exploit its full commercial potential and Asia may represent its future, but no continent lives football the way Africa does. And nowhere else is football the lingua franca that it is in Africa.

There are several reasons for this. For a start, football dominates the sporting landscape in Africa more than it does in any other continent, where the attention, to varying degrees, is diffused among different sports. Africa does produce world-class athletes in distance running, basketball, rugby and other sports, but these tend to be regional phenomena that do not capture the imagination of the continent as a whole. If Africa did produce a Tiger Woods or a Valentino Rossi or a Roger Federer, the odds are that, continent-wide, they would take a back seat to Samuel Eto’o or Didier Drogba.

Furthermore, unlike Europe or South America, club-versus-country disputes are rare. With few exceptions – possibly Egypt and Morocco – country always takes precedence. Ask an Enyimba, Kaizer Chiefs or Hearts of Oak supporter if they would rather see their club win the Champions League or their country win the World Cup and it is no contest. Ask that same question in Europe or South America and opinions will vary.

There is a passion for national teams in Africa that easily surpasses most of Europe. Part of this is because most top African players are based abroad, which leaves the domestic leagues to serve as perennial feeder clubs. They know not to fall too deeply in love with their clubs because, if they do well, they will be raided by European teams.

At the same time, satellite television brings football from all over the world into African homes. And with domestic football often on the periphery, African viewers soak it up, to the point that they are easily as knowledgeable as, and usually far less parochial than, their European counterparts.

The other big factor is socio-historical. Forget the facile stereotypes, Africa is easily the most heterogeneous continent on earth, a place where more than 1,000 languages are spoken, where Islam and Christianity share the stage with hundreds of indigenous faiths and where, until recently, mass migration was limited, which meant that local communities tended to grow and endure independent of each other.

With all this passion comes pride. Pride that football is one of the few areas where Africa can go head-to-head with anyone in the world. Stripped to its essence, the game consists of men in boots kicking a ball. It is about as level a playing field as you can get in any pursuit, with the possible exception of athletics. And, with African teams coming close to matching the best in the world, you have to wonder what the continent could achieve if the fields were level in other areas as well.

United way suits Dutch

In the business world, mergers are a fact of life and a straightforward way to gain size and market share. In football, we are rather more sentimental and the idea of clubs merging with neighbours who are (usually) bitter rivals is enough to send most fans into apoplexy.

Less so in the Netherlands, where, since 1958, there have been no fewer than 13 mergers among professional clubs. But the biggest could be yet to come. If the FC Limburg project goes ahead, Roda Kerkrade (a product of the merger of four clubs) and VVV Venlo in the country’s top division could combine forces with MVV Maastricht and Fortuna Sittard from the second tier.

The four clubs boast a combined attendance of 29,600, which would make them the fourth-best supported club in the Netherlands. And while a merger would mean losing some diehard fans, proponents of the FC Limburg plan (named after the area of the country that is home to the clubs) believe that it would be more than offset by the possibility of a bigger, more successful club attracting new supporters.

A recent poll among fans showed that only 23 per cent were “strongly opposed” to the idea, whereas a decade ago that figure was twice as high. Evidence, perhaps, that in the increasingly globalised landscape of football, size matters.

Italians take short cut

For Ternana, a club battling to avoid relegation from the Italian third division, it is all about lateral thinking – in more ways than one. Paolo Di Canio’s former club are packed with ball-winning central midfield players and towering defenders and strikers, but lack talented wide players.

So what do they do? They lop six metres off their pitch. “With a narrower pitch, it should help us on set-pieces,” Stefano Trinchera, the Ternana captain, said. “From now on, almost every free kick in our favour will be an opportunity to launch the ball into the box.”

Which makes you wonder if Sam Allardyce would have considered such a thing had he not been replaced at St James’ Park.

gabriele.marcotti@thetimes.co.uk