Maximizing the full potential of African football tournaments.
The Africa Cup of Nations 2019 happened to occur during the same time with Copa America 2019. This was unfortunate to some of us football fans who love to follow everything going on in the world of sports. On various occasions I had to switch matches on the screen when games were going on on both sides, I didn't want to miss any action. During this time I have to admit I gave more time to Copa America compared to the Afcon games. Copa America was more entertaining with attacking football throughout a match, this was different when it came to the Afcon matches which were lacking in attacking, poor build up play, dropping the balls every few minutes and multitudes of mistakes made by players.
Today I read about the transfer of Ivory coast player Nicholas Pepe from Lille to Arsenal at a whooping £72m the highest amount ever paid for an African footballer. The price tag of Wilfred Zaha, he's country mate is even more than that. These are players who were actively involved in Afcon 2019. I thought about more premier league stars who featured in Afcon; Mohammed Salah of Egypt, Sadio Mane of Senegal, Victor Wanyama of Kenya, Riyad Mahrez of Algeria, Alex Iwobi of Nigeria, the list goes on and on. I did watch these players play but still football of their respective nations wasn't entertaining.
These stars did play well in the Afcon games but because their teammates weren't that talented, they didn't influence the results of their teams. They could do the runs, beat defenders but once the ball left their feet, many times it would be misused by their teammates.
This shows that more talent from Europe is needed in African matches. If these players had more players at their level around them, we could feel their full potential in influencing results. Africa is already missing out on players who feature for other nations. Players like Romelu Lukaku who has roots in Democratic Republic of Congo, Mousa Dembele with roots in Mali, Marouane Fellaini with roots in Morocco, Paul Pogba with roots in Guinea, N'Golo Kante with roots in Mali, Kylian Mbappe with roots in Algeria and Cameroon, Dele Alli with roots in Nigeria. The list is very long.
African countries need to do more scouting of players who have roots in Africa and are trading their talent in other countries abroad. These players are eligible to play for the African countries they come from before they are called for international duty by another country. If all the African talent that features for European countries was used in African games, we would be having African tournaments competing on the world scene as some of the best. Football would be entertaining. And most of all Africa would be competing much more at the highest level in World Cup.