Why can’t Africa win the World Cup?

What would it take for Africa to win the Fifa World Cup?In 1977, Pelé famously predicted that an African nation would win the World Cup by the year 2000. It probably seemed like a safe bet given the continent’s passion for football and the millions of kids who grow up playing the game. We are in 2022 and still, this hasn’t happened. The farthest African teams have gotten in the tournament is to the quarter-finals: Cameroon in 1990, Senegal in 2002, and Ghana in 2010. The 2018 World Cup definitely also didn’t paint a rosy picture. All four African teams that have played to date (Egypt, Morocco, Nigeria and Tunisia) lost while scoring only a single goal between them.But what could be the reason African teams underperform? Africa has some of the best players in the world; just look at the 2022 Africa Cup of Nations winner, Sadio Mane, Mohammed Salah, Achraf Hakimi and Yassine Bounou... the list goes on.I think to win at sports, you need to find, develop and nurture talent. Doing that requires money, the know-how, and some kind of administrative infrastructure. Few African countries have this.Most African kids train on informal fields. An African player’s peer would be training at a state-of-the-art academy while he or she would be training on a gravel field somewhere on the outskirts on Windhoek. There is a gap that you can clearly see. Many coaches in Africa discover great talent, but most of the time these coaches have no formal training and very few resources, and if they eventually get the qualifications, no one would hire an African coach in Europe. So basically, the coaches never really get to experience the way the European football system works. But European coaches get the opportunity to get jobs in Africa and to learn the African system. African players are coached by the 'wise, serious white coach', but it’s never vice versa.I think clear racism. Also, Africans fail to make it to the World Cup because of corruption. It is genuinely difficult to overstate how corrupt the sport is in Africa. Cameroonian goalkeeper Joseph-Antoine Bell once said, "In French football you might expect 10% of the money to disappear – in Africa 90% disappears". Just about everything that can go on, does go on in African football: there is rampant match-fixing, corruption in transfers, rigged national football elections. Look at the classic case of the Progressive Forces in Namibia – an outside force running the affairs of a football association.I think I can go on and say that there aren’t many high-quality academies offering the kind of training a young player might find in Europe.Once these very few players make it to national level, they would spend years playing friendlies and if lucky Afcon, but they hardly ever make it to the World Cup. It’s simple: Africa has top players, but they don’t have great teams. Believe it or not, modern football requires a high level of discipline and mastery of tactics. It is about systems rather than individual talents.So until African officials stop lining their pockets with money that could be spent identifying and developing the best young talent the continent has to offer, dreams of an African nation winning the World Cup will remain elusive. However, I can’t wait for this year’s World Cup. Maybe, just maybe, Africa might get lucky.limba@namibiansun.com

Why can’t Africa win the World Cup?

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Namibian Sun 2025-08-29

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Why can’t Africa win the World Cup?

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Namibian Sun 2025-08-29

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