WHAT IS GOING ON WITH AFRICAN SOCCER ?

written by Sidy Bangoura

In the recent years, African soccer was dominated by a few countries (Nigeria, Cameroon, Egypt South Africa, etc......) and some great players emerged from The Eagles 94 olympic campaign, Cameroon 1986, or Senegal 2002.....
However, the dynamics of the game have changed and many of those teams aren't even making it to the continental championship anymore.

What's the matter? Well, the soccer BUSINESS blew up in africa in the mid 90s mainly triggered by the olympic success of the Nigerian National team in the 94' Olympics.
The so-called bigger teams have been mined by financial poblems that disturbed the harmony and performance of the teams; some federations were rightfully taken hostage for not paying players on time !! YOU CANNOT BE SUCCESFULL IN THOSE CONDITIONS !!!

While some players such as Senegalese El Hadji Diouf would rather argue for weeks on the amount of their compensations, others such as Cameroonian Samuel Eto'o don't hesitate to take a cut so that local players and other teammates would get fully paid.

One cannot take away the merit and talent of all the emerging young teams such as Ivory Coast, Togo, or Angola but the big teams need to get rid of the egos, and be where people are expecting them to be !!