Africa Has More To Offer

Writing as a volunteer and an avid football fan from England, now based in Accra, my belief is that the view that African football is a rising force is an understatement. The display of talent that was on show during the 2008 Africa Nations Cup was as high as any in the world. What is most exciting is that more African football talent is being produced as I write this piece. To me therefore, African football is not a rising force, but a force to reckon with. Figures show us that there are more and more Africans playing in the biggest teams in the world and that for some teams their most important players are of African descent. At the start of this season’s Premiership in England there were 49 Africans playing for various teams. In France there were 100- 30 from Senegal alone. In the Champions League, Europe’s most prestigious and popular club competition, there were more African players (41) than Englishmen (28), 14 from the Ivory Coast alone. Claude Le Roy, coach of Ghana’s Black Stars, is a firm believer in African football, having been a manager all over the continent- in Ghana, Democratic Republic of Congo, Cameroon and Senegal. He led the Black Stars to a third place finish in this year’s Africa Cup of Nations and helped the team to produce some fine displays against fierce opponents. A track record like his can only show us that he considers Africa to be the best place for football on the planet. “There is so much room in Africa to play football. So many kids play. The potential is there for all to see”, said the Black Stars coach. Le Roy believes the best place for young African men to play football is at the ASEC Mimosas football club’s academy in Abidjan, the capital of the Ivory Coast. The academy which produced players such as Kolo and Yaya Toure, Bacary Kone, Authur Boca and Emmanuel Eboue has shown that it is capable of producing players who can go on to play for top clubs in Europe. And with establishments like this one opening up all over the continent, more and more talent is being produced. It is worthy of note that big European clubs are developing ties with African youth academies and youth clubs. Scouts are regularly sent out to all parts of the continent to find the next Eto’o or Drogba. Recently Manchester United formed a link with South African team Kaiser Chiefs and Dutch team Ajax have a feeder club in South Africa which has successfully produced a budding Premiership player in the person of Stephen Pienar of Everton. These links provide the academies with a safe link to large European clubs and enables them to send trainees out to learn at these clubs. In Spain the number of non European Union players allowed in a team used to be three. Since the Cotonou Agreement between the European Union and 77 African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) states in June 2000, more are now allowed. The agreement allows natives of ACP countries the same rights as guest workers from other EU countries. Real Madrid paid Lyon €26 million for defensive midfielder Mahamadou Diarra in the summer of 2006, since then many other Africans have followed. Every weekend goals are scored by African players all over Europe in the major football leagues in England, Spain, France, Italy, Belgium, Germany, Greece, Turkey and many other countries. Didier Drogba is considered the best striker in the English Premiership. He is as well one of the best in the world and the most feared by defenders. Samuel Eto is one of the best in Spain and again he is known and feared by defenders all over the world. A good example of how dependant some teams are on their African players is Portsmouth FC. The team which plays in the English Premiership has four first team regulars- Sulley Muntari, John Utaka, Papa Boupa Diop and Kanu. Portsmouth’s manager Harry Redknapp has been linked with bids for Ghanaian pair of John Mensah and Anthony Annan, which shows the rising popularity of African players. African men are naturally very good at football. They naturally have a very good physique for the game and do not need to do as much work to achieve an adequate stature to play professionally. Ball skill and technical ability amongst Africans is very high and often they have more stamina than European and South American players. With the right coaching, the thousands and thousands of children who play football everyday all day in African cities, villages and townships have the potential and the raw natural talent to be professional footballers. If the number of talented footballers coming out of Africa continues at this rate then pretty soon it will produce more raw football talent than South America which is often considered to be where the best young footballers on the planet come from. Within the next 10 years most of the big European leagues will have similar numbers of African players to France; possibly more.