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Brazil and Croatia kicked off the 20th edition of the Fifa World Cup at Sao Paolo’s Arena Corinthians last night.
The globe’s biggest; single-event sporting competition is a 30-day sprint of fun and tears, a culmination of a three-year marathon campaign that started in June 2011. The better teams, and luckier ones too, will shine and the ordinary and unlucky ones as well, will receive their beatings.
Sixty-four matches are going to be played at 12 stadia by 32 nations representing Fifa’s five confederations. Union of European Football Associations (Uefa), Fifa’s largest and richest confederation has 13 representatives, while the South American Football Confederation (Conmebol), hosts of this edition, has six. Confederation of African Football has five — Nigeria, Cote d’Ivoire, Algeria, Cameroon and Ghana. There are four from the Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football and another four from Asia.
For Africa, the World Cup begins this evening when Cameroon tackle Mexico.
As another of the quadrennial showpieces begins that question arises again; When will Africa’s time to win the World Cup come? Can 2014 be the time? If not why and when will it arrive, that moment for Africa to break the World Cup duopoly that has seen two Fifa confederations — Uefa and Conmebol — sharing the glory between themselves since 1930? Uefa has won it 10 times. Conmebol has done it nine times with key member Brazil, the world’s most successful football-playing nation and probably the biggest exporter of players, with a record five titles.
It would be an indescribable moment if Ghana improve on the last-eight finish they achieved in South Africa in 2010 or Cameroon doing the same on their 1990 quarter final record. Senegal is the only other African nation to go this far in 2002 in South Korea and Japan, but are not in Brazil.
From the five African nations, we see Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire and Nigeria respectively doing well. They have the players who are competing in the best leagues in Europe and the experience to compete at that level. Cameroon and Algeria have our support as well but for them to equal the continent’s record, or bettering it should be an impossible task. Cameroon, like our three local favourites have the players, although they have tended to lack the ability to participate as a team. Algeria is, with respect, a long shot. But you never know!
Every African will logically and sentimentally go for one of their own winning the World Cup, but is this view realistic given the level of our game and the capabilities of the nations we sent out to Brazil this time, relative to the standard of the game of our opponents?
We are of the considered view that to expect an African country to win the World Cup on July 13 is to bet too much over the odds. We will thus celebrate if one of the five progresses into the last four. That would point to an improvement on the continent’s previous last-eight efforts. Africa needs a few more World Cup finals, four perhaps from now to begin to think about winning it.
There are a number of important details that we need as a continent to help us go that far. We have to have more and better facilities and introduce our children into the game when they are still young for them to grow in it just as they do when it comes to academic education.
To build better and more facilities you require money. More should be invested so as to encourage a bigger number of our children to take football as a rewarding career option and for us to be able to identify, nurture, grow and expose talent. By saying this, we are not overlooking the fact that many of our people already take football as formal work; but that has to be embedded in our collective culture and that number is not high enough yet.
Still on this, money cannot exclusively come to football when economies are not performing well. Therefore, African economies have to grow and that growth then trickles in the sport. It is not coincidental that the better-resourced nations are the ones that often do well in most sports, including football.
More money, more and better facilities and a serious and professional approach to coaching would help us boost the numbers of players of high quality. This is critical as African teams have no strength in reserves. In South Korea and Japan for example, Senegal did well for us, but the intensity of the World Cup means that some of our players will suffer injuries and suspensions, so have to miss certain games. Only the nations that have depth of numbers would be able to bring in equally able replacements.
Experience at the top level is essential too. That experience has to be evenly shared across the squad yet for many African teams this is rarely the case. There are many teams with one, two or three figures playing for the best clubs in Europe in the same line-up with a player playing semi-professional football in Africa.
It is these, among a range of seemingly small details that can win us the World Cup. July 13 is too early though.
Online Reporter