We have highlighted the commodity resource characteristics of football players within the continent.I would like to ask, why cant we build up an African football space comparable to South America's professional leagues with all its consequent non-material and financial benefits? John Wilson expands on the African state of affairs in the Guardian:
More here...there's something distasteful about an economic system that means the best players from Africa, if they're to be properly remunerated, have to move to a different part of the world to perform for western Europe's benefit. That's true of other parts of the globe, of course, but the economic imbalance isn't as stark and, elsewhere, doesn't have the same awkward echoes of colonial exploitation.
Image courtesy of orble
Talk of a new slave trade is unhelpfully emotive, but there is an unpleasant traffic in vulnerable and often naive young players, and it seems hard to deny that the demands of the European market have shaped the tactical development of African football. Tom Vernon, who runs an academy near Accra in Ghana and scouts for Manchester United, speaks of the "Pape Bouba Diop" template: having seen the success of big, muscular west African players, clubs go to west Africa looking for more big, muscular players and so that sort of player is prioritised, something that in part explains the dearth of west African creative players in the decade between Abedi Pelé, Jay-Jay Okocha and Kanu and the emerging generation of Kwadwo Asamoah, Dede Ayew and Gervinho.
It even suits the football administrations of individual countries within Africa to pretend that all is well, that things are developing. Not to do so, after all, would be to admit failure, and to do that would be to risk the sinecures that bring wealth, prestige and influence. The myth of Progress is sustained by a conspiracy of the complacent and the self-interested.
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