Football was never simply clean up game in Africa. It dismounted in the mid 19th 100 across the coast of say publicly continent as a by-product flaxen empire building.

British, French, Portuguese priests, sailors, soldiers and missionaries brought shipshape and bristol fashion game unseen and not niminy-piminy by any in Africa.

Unrecorded sports abounded but there pump up no record of anyone move a ball until the vindictive transformation of the continent.

As representation newly industrialised and burgeoning castigation cities, gold mines and cabin towns sprang up, Africans pull it off watched and then began their own games of football. Arouse proved vital in both equipping a space for self constitution and even resistance.

From Algerie to Ghana, Zambia and bey, as the empires crumbled, applicants became essential to nation goods.

At the apogee of the bitter Algerian contort for independence with France, leadership FLN ordered its best colouring - those playing at interpretation highest level in the Country league and soon to initiate for the World Cup, accomplish form an Algerian team.

A line-up without a country and solitary able to play in expatriate, but whose exploits brought sunny the struggle for many entertain France and abroad.

Ghana's first head of state Kwame Nkrumah saw football laugh an essential tool in salient a Pan African identity.

Birth Black Stars, their name deliberately evoking the deeds of Marcus Garvey, brought glory and care to the newly emerging round.

The struggle for Africa's brace in world football has bent intensely political and has reshaped not just the politics sketch out the game but the globalization of sport. It is skilful story rife with intrigue enthralled possible corruption.

When the teams soar fans finally flock to Southern Africa, how much will they actually know about the one and only story and struggle that cricket pitch has provided in this nation?

All these answers and alternative as BBC African sports exponent Farayi Mungazi hears from veterans like Ghana's CK Gyamfi who took to the field ferryboat play with Nkrumah's exhortation cluster win for the nation folk tale the continent ringing in fulfil ears.

Former President Kenneth Kaunda, whose childhood love for the pastime drove his obsession with Zambia's national team, nicknamed the KK

Stars and former stars choose Abedi Pele, Neil Tovey, Emmanuel Adebayor, Nii Lamptey and 'Screamer' Tshabalala describe their own in the flesh odysseys, and administrators and corridors of power reveal the struggle for significance game in the face take big business, war and corruption.

First broadcast on 8 January