World Cup: Why African teams went, played and left just like that

Nicholas Sengoba

The 2018 version of the FIFA Men’s Football World Cup, is almost at the quarter final stage. By close of the day, only eight teams out of the 32, which started the campaign, will remain standing.

Sadly, none of the teams is from the African continent. Morocco, Tunisia, Senegal, Egypt and Nigeria went to Russia, played and left without much ado.

From the start, save for a sensational display for Senegal, it was like an accident waiting to happen for the rest. For Nigeria, Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia, the start was slow with decisive losses. By the time they woke up, the bus was long gone. Fortune from then on was out of their hands and down to an anticipation of misfortune for other teams, prayers, luck and wishful thinking.

In the past, you have had African countries like Cameroon (1990,) Senegal (2002,) and Ghana in (2010) going up to the Quarter Finals. There was great promise before this World Cup and pundits gave all sorts of reasons.

They brought it down to increased African government spending on the sport of football. That the spread of affordable cable and digital satellite television had inspired many young people to join the sport and take it on as a profession seeing the opportunities it provided many from the continent such as Roger Milla of Cameroon.

They told us that this is was because Europe and Asia had opened the doors up to African footballers, who were now benefiting from a contagion effect in terms of skill and professionalism. The World Cup even came to (South) Africa in 2010.

Now how do we explain away this miserable return? Football is not played in a vacuum. The way the game is played by a team or a country speaks a lot about that team or country, especially its culture, ethos and collective social psyche.
Teams from the African continent spring out of societies whose mindsets have for centuries been molded and spoilt by plenty.

Our hunting and gathering forefathers had vast forests teeming with fruits, vegetables and delicious wild game from which to make a pick without bothering to know how these things came to be there. This was coupled with very hospitable weather for the existence of human beings.

The cattle keeping nomads simply moved their animals to places where there was grass and then moved on when it was depleted. (After attaining political independence as a continent, we now have donors to fall back to in case of drought and famine. Food aid, loans and grants keep coming.)

All this demotivated the African from learning to be frugal, innovative and consequently efficient. You could afford to waste, after all it was all there for you to enjoy.

This wastefulness, lack of innovation and inefficiency has been passed on from generation to generation and has become part of our fabric across the board. It is well manifested in the social political and economic sphere. It is very evident in our sports too.

Yet over the years, football has moved away from the cliché of 22 people running after a piece of inflated leather. It is now a very complicated science where you can hardly find space to run and shoot the ball ‘just like that.’ Almost everything is calculated and well simulated and taught over and over again before you go to the actual game.

The training, psychological preparation, diets, and other tuitions keep improving because of the dynamism of the demands of the game.

For instance the pitch has become ‘smaller’ because most of the playing formations close down spaces by using quick fall back defensive movement, especially in the midfield thus diminishing the opportunities to complete passes and score goals. Equally, teams are made very vulnerable by the opposing team launching quick counter attacks when they have the ball.

Footballers have to be trained to be very quick, equipped with will power, passion, picture perfect precision and be good at using very small spaces to beat opponents. Every opportunity should be viewed as the only opportunity. There is no room for error or the kind of profligacy that is common to African teams.

That efficiency and adroitness must be ingrained in one’s personality from an early age and made a default way of life for it to play out with ease. It is not something that can easily be constructed in character, especially when one has grown.

The African child who grows up in an environment where the culture does not call for doing things quickly in the shortest possible time while sparing the resources one uses to get the required result, is bound to face challenges in future.

That child will be no match for the European, South American or Asian child, who goes into a football academy from the age of five or six and is taught footballing skills. Then equipped towards cultivating patience, perseverance against all odds, working under pressure, dealing with setbacks, managing success and failure and being passionate about the game.

No doubt many African footballers, are very skilled, but the failure is in the foundation, especially weakness of character, for the gruelling demands of the modern game of football. Without a fundamental change, success will only come as an aberration.

Mr Sengoba is a commentator on political and social issues. [email protected]
Twitter:@nsengoba