| This 1997 archives document is part of | THE SHOT THAT PASSED RIGHT THROUGH THE NET |
Since Nigeria's triumph at the olympics and with George Weah of Liberia named World Footballer of the year 1995 high hopes have been put put on African Football. It is believed to become the third superpower besides Europe and South America while already today African talents are the darlings of many European football fans because of their skill and their enthusiasm. They are the difference in the after-Bosman-football-world of Western Europe where teams getting mixed up, national styles blur and the club squads begin to look more and more the same.
But there's still a lot of prejudice against Africa itself which can be seen in the unwillingness to play a big tournament there and arrange with the circumstances. Europe refuses to value the individual characteristics of such games that cannot lie in the brillliant organisation or facilities but in the way the games are celebrated and the teams and fans are hosted in a special atmosphere.
Also, at least in Germany, it is hard to find anybody who is able to name more than five ore ten African states, and the ones the person knows are usually the ones where a war takes place. There is a simple lack of interest for the black continent which exposes itself brilliantly in the questions of German TV reporters on christmas when in search of a gimmick they ask African Bundesliga players for how christmas is named in their home language. They are terribbly surprised when they learn that a language named 'zimbabweansh' or 'nigeriansh' does not exist and they don't seem to understand really that the language map and people geography of Africa is different from the state map even when explained. Because they don't care much.
Considering all this it is not easy to believe too many Europeans who talk of it are able to give a valuable opinion how far African teams can go and how much they have improved. So 'The Shot that passed right through the night' likes to open up a discussion in which contributions from outside espacially from African experts are welcome. 1
So the question remains: Is Africa really ready to win a world cup?
Africa did not have TV when people in Europe already had. There was no cinema to watch football games in. There were only stories and rumours. So when an African side had to face an intercontinental match or tournament it was a bigger adventure than anybody in Europe can imagine. Most players were homebased, the stars in Europe took on the nationality of the country they played at. Most famous example is Eusebio from Mozambique who became a star for Portugal.
So most of these home based players had not ever seen an European match before traveling abroad. Nobody could guide them. Africa did not have a coaching tradition. Because of colonialisation by Europeans nearly all African countries did not exist before 1960. So no players had international or intercontinental experience. There was no generation who could pass on their experiences. The Europeans had not been interested in building 'national forces' and International friendly matches especially on another continent could hardly be afforded. And so football as an international competition began late and slow for Africa. The well known example is the world cup desaster of Zaire 1974.
First possibility to qualify was 1966 but FIFA did not grant Africa more than one joint berth for one single team together with Asia. Africa boycottet. So, with the exception of the long Egypt tradition 3 , African World cup history began 1970 with Morocco. The North African states, closer to Europe, with better facilities and better organisation did better than Zaire would do four years later. The Zairians were confronted with the less positive sides of German hospitality. The home press and the home fans seemed to like the Zairians fit well into their desired racist metapher of stupid, monkey-eating half-animals who did not even know the rules. Zaire had a terrible World Cup that was not representative for the standard African game and that even was not as bad as the results suggested. Their failure seemed to confirm all prejudices and espacially in Germany, the 1974 host, made Africans the clowns of football until Anthony Yeboah in the early Nineties regained the respect for African football. The people saw what they wanted to see and they felt confirmed in their racism. Unlike in the big colonial powers, especially in France, the interest for Africa and Africans was zero.
Even Germany's 1:2 loss to Algeria 1982 and the 0:0 against Tunisia 1978 were not seen as a sign of strength of the Africans but as a lack of concentration against the minnows. And it had been North African teams. The Cameroon world cup campaign of 1982 (Cameroon went out undefeated in the first round only by scoring a goal less than Italy, the later world champion) was not paid any attention to.
The bang came in the opening match 1990. Cameroon beat Argentina and played a formidable world cup. Everything turned around. Africas possibilities were seen as great from that moment on. Players from Africa came into every league and young talents were hunted by modern slave traders.
Everything was put into a different context. Although from the win-per-game point of view the 1994 world cup was the worst for Africa since 1974, their world cup contingent was expanded to five starters in France 1998. A little compansion for the era when Africa was put at a disadvantage and limited in its development (see below: 'The problems of today').
Africa is beginning to have coaching tradition, information and a self-confidence that is grounded on success in the game. This is the big progress Africa made and that was the big difference of the world cup campaigns of Cameroon 1990 and Nigeria 1994. But this does not necessarily be valid for all African teams as the following points will make clear.
Big steps were taken in the late Seventies and in the Eighties. Youth teams were buildt and the national teams improved. 1982 Algeria and Cameroon combined for 7:5 points in the first round of the world cup, the best African result in win/game statistics yet. In 1986 Morocco won their group in first round and went out by a last minute goal against Germany. 1990 a great Cameroon generation appeared the last time on the stage to surprise the world.
But this development has stopped. African states are in a bad economical situation and so are the Football Associations. Arguments over money, gouvernment interferences, rotten facilities and so on. The youth teams get neglected, the best talents already scouted by European football club farms. Many countries pull out of competions because they run out of money and can not afford to pay the travel costs for away matches. From this point of view Africa now is more on the way down than on the way up. At least it needs help.
On the other hand a generation of African players established itself as professionals in Europe and is getting closer to European knowledge and standards. They are able to help and teach at home in the future, to guide their national teams now. From this point of view, Africa is on the way up. But these players have to be integrated in the system.
Also you can not Africa see as one. There are differences, espacially between North Africa and the rest but also among the others. Think of Chad that cannot play any internationals. Think of South Africa with top facilities.
That is why the following oparagraph distinguishes:
First of all there are the better organised campaigns of North Africa. North Africas semi professional clubs dominate the African Cups for national champions, cup-winners and runners-ups because they are much better organised, not because Egyptian individual players are more skilful than their Nigerian counterparts. Egypt, Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia all play on a very good level and are able to keep it, but they don't seem capable to match with a team like Nigeria when Nigeria reaches its top form. But they are more consistent. They are well organised on and off the pitch while many other African teams alter genius and dilettantism. This leads to the phenomena that a team like Tunisia beats talented African teams in the qualification because of its disciplined, oganised game. But when then confronted with other similar well organised teams, like at the olympics, is not able to beat them just by its skills.
This is different with teams like Ghana or Cameroon. Sometimes they lose 1:6 to Europeans because of the lack of organisation but sometimes they are able to beat almost anyone on a good day by their skills. Teams like these are the ones for a real World Cup surprise or a real desater, if they make it there. But are they good enough to go through all the way? At least they have a considerable number of real professionals in Europe now. More top professionals than the class of teams teams like Zambia, whose talent would enable them too to beat anybody on a good day while losing to anybody else on another day.
One of the problems of those class of teams is the typical gap between the players used to professional standards in Europe and the home based players and officials who feel offended by the stars moaning. There is indeed a big gap between the world of George Weah at Italy and the world of Liberia, but in this case he knows and everybody seems to appreciate his engagement for Liberia.
It seems there is only one team able to win a World Championship nowadays for Africa: Nigeria with its outstanding generation of players. Already succesful in youth tournaments before, Nigeria won at the Olympics despite an administration in turmoil. The Youth teams of nowadays are deterioating, the Under-17 squad out of the world Cup race, disqualified after a cancelled away match because they had forgotten the passports at home. The Super Eagles are without their Olympic head coach Jo Bonfrere again, who guided them to Olympic Gold after pulling out of the job several times before. But the players are almost exclusively Europe based professionals, who seem to love to come together and play for Nigeria. Not just professionals but each one a star playing for clubs with big names, they were given the 'Dream team' lable even before Atlanta. Even a second or third Nigerian team should be able to compete for a world cup berth. Despite the administration problems this team can only beat themselves. (What Nigeria is said to have done before several times). Nigeria looks to become the Brasil of Africa.
But at the World Cup tournament they need to gear up.They need to have their problems settled until 1998. Even Gold medal players still have to learn. At the Olympics Nigeria was able to overcome the stupid goals their clever South American opponents Brasil and Argentina had scored, but the opponents in France will benefit from such lack of concentration with wins. Not only European older players play much better and mature than their Under-23 squads, espacially in Germany, where hardly one player of the Under-23 side finds himself in the first eleven of his Bundesliga club.
Nigeria played exciting football at the Olympics with a system that reminded of Ajax Amsterdam and seemed to fit very well. But a new coach will have his own ideas and the quarrels who to field from this enormous number of superstars will arise again in time. Especially because Nigeria is not doing too well aside from tournaments and championships, like many poor results in friendly and their bad FIFA-ranking display.
And before discussion who is playing and what system Africas great hope will play at France they will have to qualify:
The top seats were not determined by the FIFA ranking but by the success in world cup qualification of the past. Egypt, Morocco, Nigeria and Cameroon gained top spots despite of for example non of them were among the final four of the last African cup of nations. This led to the fact that Africas number one and number two according to the FIFA ranking, Zambia and South Africa, were drawn into one group. Believing in the value of this ranking, it means that at least one of the two or three best African teams of the recent five years will be excluded to play at France while one team will qualify that isn't any better than number 10 or so. Comparing the combined index of the FIFA world-ranking of the five groups, group 4 seems a joke, espacially when compared with group 3. The aim of producing the five best teams is hardly reachable this way.
But the seeding was difficult. The FIFA world ranking is quite a nice thing but one should not take it too serious 4 . And: A seeding by the ranking had excluded Nigeria from the pool of the top teams. That would have been unfair for the team Nigeria had been drawn against and so would have made it necessary to give Nigeria an extra-position, not justified by the ranking, to make it a fair draw. So maybe it was more a political decision to avoid this scenario. Anyway, the winner now is Cameroon or whoever qualifies from Group 4, the loser probably Zambia or South Africa.
2 For example: You have to know about arthletic or tactical deficits before you can work on them.
3 Egypt already was surprisingly successful at the Olympics in the 1920s and played at the World Cup before the second World War
4 Many countries cannot afford to play the number of matches taken into account. Others have more and only the best count. Some games are played not with the best team because professionals based in Europe cannot be paid the travel costs. Games Africa vs. Africa count less than games Europe vs. Europe, the top African team cannot climb higher after a number of African encounters than a top European with the same results after some comparable games against European teams. This may be justifiable but makes it even impossible for an imaginable African superteam unless it has many intercontinental encounters. But Europeans don't like to play at Libreville, Brazzaville, Lagos or Kinshasa. So it will be away-games. They are expensive. So the FIFA world ranking tells us more about the ranking within a continent than that it is a good measurement to compare for example Hungary with Gabon. And even among the teams from one continent one has to be careful. Everybody knows, Nigeria is the best team in Africa, but in the ranking it isn't by far.
5 For non statisticians: It means that
if the group is played 100 times, Cameroon will win 35 times. It is not
a prediction that Cameroon wins a particular case because Cameroon has
the highest percentage. And it means also: 'Not Cameroon' 65%
©1997 The Shot That Passed Right Through The Net