Is Southern Africa home of mediocrity?

Noel Munzabwa
IS Southern Africa the home of mediocrity in African football? This is the million dollar question that keeps popping up after the completion of the second round of the on-going 2015 Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers on Wednesday night.
This question had been lingering after the region’s seven representative nations managed a single win in six matches which on its own was unconvincing. Sympathy could have been drawn from the first round as all but Zambia had played the opening group matches away given the difficult conditions that affect results especially in Africa. But with just one win and three draws and two home defeats and one away defeat one is persuaded to believe indeed that the bloc could be the home of soccer mediocrity given the highest representation against the poor performance.

Seven is the highest zonal representation in the qualifiers shared by Caf Zone 3 (West Zone B) and the Caf Zone 6 Southern Africa and yet results in the first two rounds desert the quarter representation of the two regions.

On the contrary, the West B Zone has five wins Cote d’ Ivoire 1, Ghana 1, Mali 1 and Burkina Faso 2 with the Central Zone representative countries have the highest – Cameroon 2, Congo Brazzavile 2, DR Congo 1 and Gabon 1.

To be precise, only South Africa’s 3-0 win over Sudan in the opening round last weekend and Malawi’s 3-2 over Ethiopia stand as the only big margin achieved with Mozambique providing two of the four among the five draws.

Mozambique have drawn with Zambia 0-0 and Niger 1-1 with Lesotho coming up with a 1-1 draw at home to Gabon with the goalless between South Africa and Nigeria completing the draws scored by the Southern Africa bloc.

A total of 87 points have been accumulated by the 28 group stage teams but the bloc representatives have 11 points – South Africa 4, Malawi 3, Mozambique 2, Lesotho 1 and 2012 champions Zambia 1.

The region has contributed only nine of the 70 goals conceding 14 in the process.

Caf Zone 1 – Northern Zone
Algeria, Tunisia and Egypt

Caf Zone 2 – Zone West A
Cape-Verde, Guinea, Senegal and Sierra Leone

Caf Zone 3 Zone West B
Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Togo

Caf Zone 4 Central Zone
Cameroon, Congo, Congo DR and Gabon

Caf Zone 5 Central-East zone
Ethiopia, Uganda and Sudan

Caf Zone 6 Southern Zone
South Africa, Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia.