African footballers shine at the World Cup, but not for Africa

Despite African brilliance on the world stage, players increasingly choose foreign flags, citing better organisation, respect and pathways than African federations offer, writes Sean Andah.

African play­ers are never far from the pin­nacle of the world’s game. The per­fect illus­tra­tion of this can be seen in France and its approach both to devel­op­ment in foot­ball and to a sense of national iden­tity, car­ried over and evolved from old colo­nial policy. Unlike the Brit­ish empire and other lead­ing European powers of the time, France instilled a policy of assim­il­a­tion in its colon­ies, aim­ing to turn col­on­ised people into “civ­il­ised” French­men and women hav­ing (in the­ory) equal rights with their col­on­isers, to be developed through the mis­sion civil­isatrice.

France’s 1998 World Cup win­ning squad relied on stars with roots in Africa and the French Carib­bean, such as Mar­cel Desailly, Zined­ine Zid­ane, Lilian Thuram and even a young Thi­erry Henry.

Exactly 20 years later, this was even more appar­ent as France won a second World Cup, fea­tur­ing the likes of Adil Rami, Pres­nel Kim­pembe, Raphaël Varane, Samuel Umtiti, Paul Pogba, Ben­jamin Mendy, Blaise Matu­idi, N’Golo Kanté, Steve Nzonzi, Nabil Fekir and young stars such as Ous­mane Dembélé and Kylian Mbappé.

At that tour­na­ment a whop­ping 78% of France’s squad came from fam­il­ies with roots out­side the French main­land. It is quite ironic, there­fore, that while many on social media dubbed this squad “Africa FC” as it went on to lift the pres­ti­gi­ous trophy, Africa itself had one of its worst World Cup show­ings since 1982 – with not a single African nation mak­ing it past the group stage.

So, what is hold­ing African play­ers back from rep­res­ent­ing African coun­tries?

Some play­ers may feel a genu­ine kin­ship with the coun­tries they rep­res­ent, grow­ing up in immig­rant fam­il­ies, or com­ing from fam­il­ies that have been cit­izens of these nations for dec­ades, with their con­nec­tion to their coun­tries of ori­gin dwind­ling over time.

For oth­ers, not rep­res­ent­ing an African coun­try is an act­ive decision. Eng­land and Manchester United mid­fielder Kob­bie Mainoo was born in Stock­port to two Ghanaian par­ents, and has opted for a squad role behind the likes of Jude Belling­ham

– much to the chag­rin of the Ghana FA pres­id­ent, Kurt Okraku, who called the decision “unfor­tu­nate”, going on to say that “full-blooded Ghanai­ans should be rep­res­ent­ing their coun­tries.”

Opportunitites

While European coun­tries do offer prestige, rep­res­ent­ing an African nation can provide greater oppor­tun­it­ies for reg­u­lar foot­ball and a more cent­ral role within a national team. Cur­rent Golden Boy trophy holder Désiré Doué already has two Cham­pi­ons League medals to his name, hav­ing played a key role in the attack­ing sys­tem of the Paris Saint-Ger­main team, estab­lish­ing him­self as one of the world’s best young attack­ing play­ers. However, due to strong pos­i­tional com­pet­i­tion in one of the top national teams on the planet, he is often releg­ated to the bench in France’s inter­na­tional games. Mean­while Doué’s older brother Guéla, who plies his trade for Stras­bourg, a mid­dling Ligue 1 side, is a core part of Ivory Coast’s World Cup squad, provid­ing reli­able sup­port in both attack and defence from his right back pos­i­tion, scor­ing a goal and provid­ing an assist in The Ele­phants’ his­toric win over France in the pre-tour­na­ment friend­lies.

The US star striker Folarin Balo­gun is an uncom­mon case. Born to Nigerian par­ents and raised in Lon­don, he spent 12 years at the Arsenal academy.

After spend­ing a major­ity of his youth career with Eng­land’s national team, he instead chose to defy all expect­a­tions, accept­ing the call up to the US team, for which he was eli­gible due to a freak cir­cum­stance: his mother was turned away from a return flight to Lon­don after a hol­i­day in New York, due to the air­line not want­ing to trans­port someone in such a late stage of preg­nancy. Balo­gun was thus born in New York and and spent the first two months of his life there, before return­ing to his fam­ily in Lon­don with birth­right US cit­izen­ship.

African foot­ball has always lacked a cer­tain level of prestige and high regard. Even when a player chooses to rep­res­ent their home coun­try and is spoken of as one of the world’s best, they are dis­cour­aged by their clubs when it comes to rep­res­ent­ing an African nation, pres­sured in some cases to pri­or­it­ise European club foot­ball instead.

In 2022 the Sene­g­alese Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion was at log­ger­heads with Eng­lish Premier League side Wat­ford, accus­ing it of refus­ing to release Ismaila Sarr for that year’s Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) tour­na­ment as it drif­ted closer to the releg­a­tion zone.

That same year, Napoli owner Aure­lio De Laurentiis made an expli­cit pub­lic state­ment, assert­ing that he would not allow his club to sign any more African play­ers unless they signed a waiver agree­ing to give up their right to rep­res­ent their coun­tries at AFCON. De Laurentiis made this state­ment at a time when Kal­idou Koulibaly, Napoli’s star defender, was also cap­tain of the Sene­g­alese national team. The con­sequences of this insti­tu­tional dis­reg­ard are tan­gible. Play­ers with African her­it­age increas­ingly opt out of rep­res­ent­ing their coun­tries of ori­gin entirely, cit­ing poor organ­isa­tion, inad­equate facil­it­ies and a lack of basic pro­fes­sional respect. A num­ber of play­ers with African her­it­age have rejec­ted call-ups, switched alle­gi­ances or dis­tanced them­selves from national setups that they feel do not treat them as pro­fes­sionals.

Boateng broth­ers

The Boateng broth­ers illus­trate this well. Kev­in­Prince and Jérôme were integ­ral to the suc­cess of the national teams they rep­res­en­ted, but while Jérôme is regarded as a Ger­man foot­balling legend and one of the best defend­ers to grace the sport, Kevin-Prince was, in his own words, pushed out of the Ghana squad in the middle of a World Cup for demand­ing bet­ter terms and timely pay for him­self and his team-mates.

When the exper­i­ence of rep­res­ent­ing an African nation is char­ac­ter­ised by logist­ical chaos and a sense that the fed­er­a­tion does not value its own play­ers, the decision to pri­or­it­ise European foot­ball becomes easier to jus­tify. Another per­spect­ive on why play­ers may not rep­res­ent their home coun­try is due to war or con­flict in the region, lead­ing them to become refugees in other coun­tries.

This is the case for play­ers such as Alphonso Dav­ies of Bay­ern Munich, who was born in Ghana as a Liberian refugee and now cap­tains the Cana­dian national team; while Alex­an­der Isak and Taha Ali of the Swedish national team were born to Erit­rean and Somali refugee par­ents respect­ively. Aus­tralia’s national team the Soc­ceroos fully embraces this trend, with play­ers Nestory Irankunda, Mohamed Touré, Awer Mabil and Tete Yengi being born as refugees or hav­ing a refugee par­ent. African foot­ball, both on and off the pitch, is seen by those at the top of the foot­ball world as unre­fined and under­developed, with poor man­age­ment and coach­ing and even worse facil­it­ies.

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Source: African business

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