Ghana’s Progress Saves African Embarrassment – Special Comment

It is now early enough in the World Cup for us to declare some winners and some losers.

The biggest winners thus far have been the mercurial South Americans. The qualifiers from the Football Federation mysteriously named CONMEBOL*, have so far secured ten wins and two draws. Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay have already qualified by topping their groups. Brazil and Chile have won four out of four with their four victims coming from all four other major continents; Africa, Asia, Europe and North America. Brazil are certain to qualify although Chile must avoid defeat to Spain. If they don’t, Switzerland could overtake them.

Africa Out of Africa

All the pre-torunament talk was of what home advantage would bring to the African challenge. So far the results have been dismal. Of the six qualifiers, Nigeria, Cameroon, Algeria, and South Africa have already fallen at the first hurdle. In their first 12 games, African sides only managed four goals from open play, and two further penalties for Ghana – six goals in all.

In fact Ghana, the only African side to qualify, have still not scored a goal from open play. They beat Serbia 1-0 with a penalty awarded for a handball, and their goal in the 1-1 draw with Australia came courtesy of another penalty awarded for a handball. The United States await them in Rustenburg and Uncle Sam’s Army should regard Ghana as a less than insurmountable obstacle at a stadium they already played in. It should be stated though that were it not for Harry Kewell’s handball on the line, Ghana would have secured a goal from open play.

The overall African record at present is 2-5-10 with eleven goals scored and 21 conceded. That eleven goals scored includes five scored in the third games by South Africa, Cameroon and Nigeria securing results which were ultimately insufficient to qualify. Of the remaining six, two came from penalties.

Of the other four, Ivory Coast’s goal against Brazil came as a late consolation when they were already 3-0 down. Only Nigeria’s goal in the 1-0 win over Greece, Cameroon’s goal against Denmark and South Africa’s glorious opener against Mexico in the first game of the tournament wriggle free from the list of caveats.

Nigeria were perhaps more than any other agents of their own destruction. They had by then laudably held the powerful Argentinians to just one goal in game one and were comfortably leading a feeble Greece side 1-0 when Sani Kaita decided to land his studs on a Greek player waiting to take an innocuous throw in.

The resultant red card rejuvenated a hapless Greece side. With the tactical guile of Otto Rehhagel behind them, they came back to win the match 2-1. Without Kaita’s idiocy, Nigeria would surely have joined Ghana in the last 16. You could also recall Joseph Yakubu’s miss of the tournament, or any other, against South Korea.

So why has Africa failed to benefit from home advantage? Firstly, the concept was always a bit of a myth in the first place. Africa is a massive continent with topographical and meteorological differences, vaster, in fact far vaster, than those which exist in Europe. South Africa is many thousands of miles distant from all five of the African qualifiers. Nobody wrote that the Portuguese would have an advantage because of the last World Cup being in Germany.

Not only that, but the matches have taken place at the height of the South African winter. Some of the temperatures in which matches have been played are closer to those in which the top European players play their league games. The altitude resembles more the conditions South American players face in games against Bolivia and Paraguay.

As said, Africa is a vast continent and there are also the range of cultural differences one would expect in such an amount of space. Those who bracketed Africa as culturally homogeneous and then drew conclusions based on that, would have reached false ones.

But you can add to that, the peculiarities brought about by South Africa’s unique racial and political history. One commentator wrote that many visiting African fans would find South Africa to seem more like Argentina or Australia than their own country.

Did All Change Hamper Team Unity?

There is an old saying that goes roughly, ‘You Dance with the One That Brung You.’

Therefore it always seemed odd, and a sign of low self esteem, that two African sides, Nigeria and Ivory Coast fired their managers after they had secured qualification. Both replaced them with aging Swedes with no prior knowledge of either the players or African football.

In two years without any defeat, Bosnian Vahid Halilhodžić ensured qualification for the Ivory Coast for both the World Cup and the African Cup of Nations (ACON). In the latter tournament, Ivory Coast were knocked out by Algeria and Halilhodžić was removed. The new coach Sven Goran Eriksson had taken Mexico to the brink of elimination in CONCACAF until his inevitable removal prompted their resurrection and ultimate qualification under Javier Aguirre. He had also spectacularly failed with England. Eriksson did not meet his players for the first time until May. Their lack of discipline and cohesion has been apparent in their games so far.

Nigeria actually finished third in the ACON under coach Shaibu Amodu. Despite that, he was removed in February. Swede Lars Lagerbäck was appointed later that month.

Algeria didn’t change coach but the coach changed players. Six players who traveled to Sudan for that tense play-off eliminator with Egypt were dropped for the final 23 man squad, Mourad Meghni, Yacine Bezzaz, Slimane Raho, Kamel Ghilas, Mohamed Ouserir, and Samir Zaoui.

Meghni admittedly had a knee injury but the others made way for players like Habib Belaid, Ryad Boudebouz and Mohamed Chakhouri who were only cleared to represent Algeria over France in May. Chakhouri only made it as far as the provisional 30 man squad but the fact remained that Rabah Saadane had been scouring the French league to augment the squad that had qualified so narrowly. It sent out a clear signal to the existing players. Algeria failed to score a goal.

Lastly wherever you play the game, football results are still decided on the pitch. When eleven men finally play eleven men, much of the material that keeps article writers preoccupied in the run up to a tournament becomes extraneous and almost irrelevant.

This means that another fact has to be faced, perhaps one uncomfortable to FIFA executives and others seeking to demonstrate how egalitarian the world of football is compared to other fields.

African football just hasn’t progressed that much in the last decade since those heady days when Nigeria and before them Cameroon were verging on becoming dominant forces. Since Pele made his bold statement that an African nation would win the World Cup by 2000, the continent has not produced the goods.

The previous World Cup held outside the strongholds of Europe and Latin America was in Korea and Japan in 2002. Only Senegal made it out of the first round among the African qualifiers. African sides won just four games out of a total of 17 they played. One of those was a narrow 1-0 win by Cameroon over a Saudi side so bad, they conceded eleven goals in their other two games. South Africa beat a Slovenia side that also lost every game. Tunisia and Nigeria failed to win any matches.

2006 in Germany was similar to 2010. Ghana made it through but every other African side failed to make it past the Group Stage, and then they lost immediately. The overall record was three wins, three draws and ten defeats in Germany. That three wins in 16 games is still one better than the two in sixteen so far this year.

One factor that observers did rightly point to was the number of Africans in the top European leagues, notably the EPL. That counted as proof that the standard of the African player had improved. That argument may be the only one that held some water in the first place but it has now been significantly damaged. If it were true, England would have the finest team in the tournament, as opposed to being the only side that failed to beat Algeria. No EPL side made it to the semi finals of this year’s Champions League and at least for now, its dominance appears to have been overstated.

You could fairly add that some of the of Africans, notably Chelsea’s Jon Obi Mikel (Nigeria) and Michael Essien (Ghana) failed to overcome injuries in time and this weakened their respective challenges. But other countries also suffered with Germany and England both losing their captains, and the Germans losing two goalkeepers.

It may also be said that beneath some world class individuals like Didier Drogba and Samuel Eto’o, there is not the kind of strength in depth that you find in the Argentina squad beneath stars like Leo Messi, Diego Milito and Carlos Tevez.

As a final defence of the African challenge, it would be fair to say the draw was unkind to their top sides. Ivory Coast and Ghana were dumped in very tough groups which makes Ghana’s achievement, dependent as it was on penalties foolishly conceded by the opposition, all the more creditable.

The three weakest sides, Algeria, Cameroon and hosts South Africa, found their own easy draws, just not easy enough. One suspects that had Ivory Coast been in Group C with Slovenia, England and the USA, they would have qualified comfortably, or had Nigeria found themselves with Japan and Denmark, they might have too.

Now Ghana, as in 2006, remain the continent’s sole standard bearers. The United States stand in their way. The US of course has just played and beaten an African side. That however should tell them nothing about Ghana.

Africa, as we have seen, is a very large and divergent continent. Algiers is the same distance from Ghana’s capital Accra as it is from Rekjavik, the capital of Iceland.

*(Spanish: Confederación Sudamericana de Fútbol; Portuguese: Confederação Sul-Americana de Futebol)