By Patrick Owusu.
Africa has got in abundance many talented footballers but there is lack of recognition of our various leagues and tournaments. This is because of the habitual movement of our players to Europe and other parts of the world, the moment they make a name for themselves.
African players move abroad because of money and fame. We can’t even keep our star players in our own country in other for them to play in our leagues, so that we will develop and gain recognition like other leagues in Europe [La liga, EPL, Ligue 1, Serie A, and etc]. The players move to Europe because they are not paid well in Africa .There is also no good insurance packages for our footballers.
Another major problem is lack of advertisement and also low level of patronage by us the Africans. We don’t invest and patronize our league. Africans spend too much time watching European and other parts of the world’s leagues. Most Africans even support teams in Europe whereby they don’t support any team in Africa.
Even shops that sell jerseys in Africa, patronise the selling of foreign jerseys more than our local teams jerseys. And also most of our journalists take much time and joy in talking and debating of foreign Football news on the radio and television sets. They, therefore, also give the masses the chance to phone in on live Football programs to give their ideas about foreign issues mostly than local issues. This means that publicity of our game is very low.
Also, we lack the facilities that will help make the game interesting and a joy to watch. Many young and upcoming footballers even lack sports wears to help them play football. Our football fields are not good enough to play the game of football on and this really doesn’t help us to really enjoy the game very well. A farmer can’t weed without using a good cutlass and the same applies to football, whereby we can’t play the game by not using good and recommended facilities.
Our players don’t wear quality team jerseys during matches. Also during training sections, our players don’t wear uniformed bibs or jerseys to show the particular team they are training for. Most of our coaches also don’t have a specific training routine program to follow daily.
Management of African football is very poor. Bribery and corruption is killing our game. The right people are also not given the mandate to manage our Football because of favoritism and nepotism. This all because of our selfish interests. Most of our football administrators are not qualified and are corrupted. Some of our coaches are still used to playing the old way of football rather than the new way of football, which is all about tactics.
Most of the teams in Africa don’t have good medical personnel because they can’t finance them. The teams also don’t have lucrative sponsorship deals to help the administrators to finance their teams very well. Most of the players too are tactically indiscipline and this has hindered the beauty of our game. The rules and regulations of football in Africa are weak and need to be strengthened to make the game very disciplined and a joy to watch.
