Talent just doesn’t cut it

No team from Africa has ever won the Fifa World Cup before. It’s a shame that most African teams show a great deal of promise but miserably fail at the World Cup.

In 1977, former football great Pele predicted that Africa would lift the cup before the turn of the 20th century. Given the continent’s passion for football and the millions of children who grow up playing the game, this was a safe bet.

African countries, namely Cameroon (1990), Senegal (2002) and Senegal (2010), reached the quarter-finals, but that’s the farthest any of them have gone.

What’s driving this underperformance, though? Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski looked at this question in their book Soccernomics. They stated that "to win at sports, you need to find, develop and nurture talent.

"Doing that requires money, know-how, and some kind of administrative infrastructure. Few African countries have any," they concluded.

I agree with them to an extent. But look - Africa has talent. Look at the number of players ply their trade in Europe. The English Premier League, for starters, is full of African talent.

Now, we have the African Cup of Nations. The best teams on the continent qualify to represent Africa on the grand stage. But once they get there – their performance is not on par with European players.

Why? There could be so many reasons why African countries have struggled to lift the cup. I believe the football associations in Africa have too much infighting. Either it’s about money or about who should be appointed as coach.

Over the years, there has been so much maladministration of funds and basically little to no incentives for players to perform.

Also, when players return for national duty – the managers in charge are nowhere close to the calibre these professionals are used to. Imagine, having a guy like Ronaldo returning for national duty and being coached by a manager with no international accolades.

Thirdly, Africa doesn’t plan. Qatar is out of the World Cup, but for close to 12 years, they planned for the World Cup. Yes, a flurry of corruption allegations and claims that Qatar "bought the World Cup" have surfaced, and their terrible treatment of migrant workers has also been in the spotlight, but one thing they got right was to plan in advance. They build football academies back to the days of Aspire Academy.

Aspire Academy is Qatari football’s production line, which was established in 2004. No fewer than 18 of the 26 players representing the host nation at the Fifa World Cup Qatar 2022 honed their skills at the high-performance centre, which is responsible for shaping the country’s football future.

Even though they have been kicked out of the World Cup. Qatar has come a long way in the countdown to the World Cup, all the way from 113th - the position they occupied back in November 2010 – to 50th.

Qatar has promised that it will continue to build on what it started in 2004. That is what Africa needs to do. There should be a serious, holistic approach to winning the World Cup.

I think so much can be said about why Africa isn’t succeeding, but one thing is for sure: their performance has improved over the years. You can see it with the likes of Ghana, Morocco, Egypt and Senegal and the way they have been carrying themselves and playing the game.

Speaking about Senegal, they have a date with Ecuador tomorrow. The hope is that they can exit Group A and hopefully have an impact in the last 16.

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