African football on the decline

After watching the recent ended African Nations Cup, I have to say African football is on a downward spiral and this asks a lot of questions about their performance in the upcoming world cup, a first on African soil.

African football is always about skill and flair mixed with creativity and dribbling which would lead to some of the greatest goals in world football. I have never seen a nations cup tournament so low in quality and so boring.

I won’t dispute that they were goals galore but most of them were a result of poor goalkeeping or some horrible defending like the Cameroon vs Egypt match in the quarterfinals. Most of the time it was players running all over the place not knowing what to do with the ball.

There are no real playmakers in African football anymore, apart from Algeria’s Karim Ziani or South Africa’s Steven Pienaar. The rest of the countries were relying on guys who play as defensive midfielders at their clubs to be their playmakers; Mali with Seydou Keita, Nigeria with John Obi Mikel, Côte D’Ivoire with Yaya Toure, whilst Cameroon deployed Samuel Eto’o in that position even though he normally plays as a striker at club level. all these guys (Keita, Obi, Toure) just do the dirty work and pass the ball to someone else who will conjure up the magic for example at Barcelona either Keita or Toure would win the balls then give either to Xavi or Iniesta to do something useful with the ball.

If you look at the current generation of Africa football stars, you can’t see players in the mould of Jay-jay Okocha; skilful and confident on the ball. Most of them are just ball winners — Mikel, Yaya Toure, Momo Sissoko, Didier Zokora, Alex Song, Jean Makoun, Michael Essien, Sulley Muntari, Mahamadou Diarra and Seydou Keita just to mention a few.

We need to go back to the 90’s when it was a happy time in African football when we had the talents like Abedi Pele, Okocha, John Moshoeu, Doctor Khumalo and Marc-Vivien Foé. Players who helped set-up or engineer some of the most spectacular goals that we have ever seen. One player who looks promising in the playmaker position is Dede Ayew — son to the legendary Abedi Pele, he was captain of Ghana’s under 20 world cup winning team.

A lot of people are convinced that countries that are going to be representing Africa at the Soccer World Cup will form one of the strongest line-ups ever to do that.

Looking at their performance at the African Cup of Nations I am not so convinced. Algeria, the same Algeria that beat eventual Champions Egypt in world cup qualifiers, were humbled by Malawi in their first game when they lost 3-0 to the minnows. Nigeria were also put to the sword by Egypt, Cameroon lost to Gabon while Ghana Ivory Coast managed to limp into the quaterfinals from a three team group following the suspension of Togo from the competition.

So far the only positives I could take from the Nation Cup is that Ghana’s young team that finished as runners-up to Egypt; they are the future hope of this continent. If they keep the current coach until the 2014 Soccer World Cup then their future looks very bright and they can reach the semifinals.