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It seems largely strange to me. Looking at this map of the Commonwealth, that encomprises the colonies that were really influenced by the british (leaving aside countries like Egypt, Sudan, Yemen and so; but including for a strange and unconfessable reason Mozambique, a former portuguese colony), which have cultural, linguistic and genetical ties to Great Britain:
Can be perceived that the map overlaps greatly with the countries where football-soccer is not the king of sports. Moreover, some british ex-colonies, but also very influenced by Great Britain as are Ireland and the USA, are also outside of the footballīs world.
The single countries in Commonwealth where football-soccer is really popular are Nigeria, Ghana and Cameroon (this last one was really a french colony except for a small stripe bordering Nigeria). Paradoxically in the most british influenced countries, football is not really a thing (South Africa underperforms taking into account its population and economical power in comparison with other african nations, tends to do not qualify to the World Cup or having success in Africa Cup, its football teams are not powerful in the african contest; Zimbabwe, Zambia, Kenia, Uganda).
In the most british-influenced countries of the Canazuk, football is also unnoticed.
In all of these countries, the main sports are different codes and variations of rugby (Rugby Union, Rugby League, American Football, Australian Football, Canadian Football, Gaelic Football) and cricket and its by-product, namely baseball. The boom of football in most of this countries began to happen since the turn of the XXI century and keeps going. In Australia, despite having received continuos waves of british inmigrants during the entire XX-XXI century, was restricted to inmigrants of non-british origin until the creation of the A-League; while at the same time it is by far the most followed and practised sport in GB.
I have the theory that the british elites "banned" consciously the practise of football-soccer in its colonies because it was a working class sport (and in the case of Ireland and the USA for anti-british nationalistic reasons). But the Rugby League was so and has had success in Oceania.
Why has this happened? How the british in the prime of its power couldnīt export succesfully football while at the same time it became tremendously popular in the rest of the world?
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At least football is not a semi-closed, endogamic sport where "foreigners" are unwelcomed and despised as happens in Rugby Union or Cricket, where the union try to prevent the expansion to non-british countries actively.
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