Africa’s long wait for another FIFA Ballon d’Or winner

FIFA World Player of the YearIt is on record that despite the long list of African football players plying their trade in major football leagues across the globe, only George Weah of Liberia won the prestigious FIFA Ballon d’Or award in 1995 ,when he was playing for Milan in the Italian Serie A league.The men’s […]

FIFA World Player of the Year
It is on record that despite the long list of African football players plying their trade in major football leagues across the globe, only George Weah of Liberia won the prestigious FIFA Ballon d’Or award in 1995 ,when he was playing for Milan in the Italian Serie A league.
The men’s World Player of the Year award, also called FIFA Ballon d’Or began in 1991 ,as an award for the best men’s player in the world.
European-based Brazilian players have dominated the award, winning 8 out of 23 times, ahead of the second country Argentina and France, which won it three times. In terms of individual players who have received the award, Brazil leads with five, followed by Portugal with four awards, and Italy with two.
The award’s youngest winner was Ronaldo, who won at the age of 20 in 1996. He won it again in 1997 and 2002. Both Ronaldo won it four times while Ronaldinho won it twice in a row. Ronaldo and Zinedine Zidane won the award three times. The oldest winner is Fabio Cannavaro, who was 33 when he won in 2006.
In 2010, the FIFA World Player of the Year and France Football’s Ballon d’Or award were merged ,and the world’s best male player has since been awarded the FIFA Ballon d’Or each year.
Besides Weah’s victory in 1995, he was ranked second in 1996 ,while Cameroon’s Samuel Eto’o Fils who joined Everton last season from Chelsea, emerged the third best in 2005, while playing for Barcelona in the Spanish La Liga.
Major impediment
African players, beside their performance at club level, face the bleak record at the national team level, where African teams do not do well at international competitions, particularly the FIFA World Cup.

Officials saddled with the task of selecting the best player in the world use the performance at club and national team levels to pick their nominee, thus African players are usually overlooked.
Africa and cash protests
Like many previous World Cup editions, Africa’s participation at the Brazil 2014 World Cup,  was marked by political and financial conflicts, as well as instability between teams and staff, which caused outrage from the Nigeria, Cameroon and Ghana camps, which had taken measures to keep the players happy.
Africa’s history of players’ revolt at the World Cup dates back to the 70’s when Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo) players protested to team management over match allowances, and in the process lost 0-9 to Yugoslavia in their second group match at the tournament.
Zaire striker Mulamba Ndaye, who was sent off for protesting that a goal by the Yugoslavians was offside, said after the match, “The management had made off with our match bonuses, and we had threatened not to play the game. Frankly, we had lost our morale. We could easily have let in 20 goals.”

After the defeat, the Zairean team was told by the country’s President Mobutu Sese Seko, who had rewarded the players for qualifying with a house and a car each – not to come home if defending champions Brazil beat them 4-0 or worse.
Every four years, when the Federation of International Football Association (FIFA) stages the World Cup fiesta, one regular feature at the soccer event is the fight for match bonuses and appearance fees by African players representing their fatherland, at the biggest soccer showpiece.
During the Brazil 2014 edition, the same scenario was on display when members of the Super Eagles team and the Black Stars of Ghana threw honour to the dogs, and engaged team officials in the fight over money, even when they had  crucial matches ahead of them.
Right from the beginning of the tournament, it was clear that Germany, Argentina, Holland and hosts, Brazil would go far in the tournament, not because of their football pedigree in the world, but because their preparation towards their qualifiers and friendly matches clearly demonstrated their serious quest to win the tournament. But African players were busy fighting team officials over match allowances and appearance fees.
The reason African countries failed to go far at the World Cup is not far-fetched. It was because their football officials short changed their players before and during the tournament. Countries like Ghana and Cameroon failed to progress to the next stage, because their football administrators failed to pay their players the  FIFA appearance fee.
It was after Ghana’s players boycotted training in protest at not receiving their money, that the country’s government flew $3 million cash in a plane to Brazil.
They protested before their Second Round match against France ,and even refused to train for a day over it.

Even as FIFA was yet to pay Nigeria her World Cup bonus, the team protested and wanted its share in advance.
It took President Goodluck Jonathan’s intervention, who ordered Sports Minister to take money to the team in Brazil.
The minister arrived Brazil and handed the money to Stephen Keshi, the coach. The Eagles lost the match to France and crashed out of the World Cup.
A similar episode played out in the Ghana camp where two key members of the Black Star squad Sulley Muntari and Kevin-Prince Boateng, were thrown out of the team for disciplinary reasons.
Just a day after seeming to resolve a possible player mutiny over World Cup bonus payments, the Ghana Football Association released two separate statements, saying two of the country’s stars had been “suspended … indefinitely from the Black Stars with immediate effect.”
Muntari was suspended “in the wake of his unprovoked physical attack on an executive committee member of the GFA and a management member of the Black Stars, Mr. Moses Armah”, one statement read.
The other statement said Boateng was dropped from the squad because of “vulgar verbal insults targeted at Coach Kwesi Appiah” during a training session.
For the Ghanaian players, it did not appear sad at all, except for the tax implications. They each received crisp stacks of United States bills equalling more than $100,000 per man, after the Brazilians took 17 percent at the airport. James Kwesi Appiah, Ghana’s coach, said the reason players wanted the money in cash was a matter of tradition.
“In a normal sense it should be paid straight to a bank account,” he said. “But you are coming from a different area, and you need to understand the differences.”

One of the Ghanaian players, John Boye, was photographed kissing his bundle of cash. The next day, he accidentally scored a goal against his own team as Ghana’s World Cup effort ended in acrimony. In a tournament that held so much promise for Africa, the rest of the teams are gone, too.
Also, Cameroon players had staged a protest in Morocco during pre-World Cup friendlies, demanding to be paid allowances before taking part in subsequent matches.
The Indomitable Lions squad was in Morocco playing a friendly tournament when the row broke out.
They refused to travel to Algeria for the subsequent game, an action that led to a 15 match suspension for Samuel Eto’o,the captain of the national side.
A few days before the World Cup kicked off, players from Cameroon protested that they will not fly to Brazil from their camp based in Austria, until their football officials pay them all the money owed them.
Way forward
For African countries to go far in the World Cup in future, the non-payment of bonuses to players should not even arise. Besides, players should begin adequate preparation long before the tournament kicks off. African countries need to engage in regular developmental programmes to groom younger talents for the national teams, ahead of every World Cup. It is time to bring an end to  the fire brigade approach which has become the way of life for African countries.

African countries hardly learn from the mass failure arising from this negative approach every four years. It is time for African players to take their rightful place in their various clubs in Europe.
It is unfortunate that most of the African players paraded at the last World Cup hardly play in top clubs in Europe. Some of them were benched in their various clubs, while some of them played in lower division leagues.
Above all, football administrators in Africa should find a way to be transparent with national players, instead of insulting them in the media and pilfering their bonuses during a crucial tournament such as the World Cup.
Statistics
Cameroon tops the chart as the country with the most appearances from Africa with seven outings, while the Super Eagles of Nigeria are second with five appearances, followed by Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco with four appearances each.
Ghana, South Africa and Ivory Coast have each appeared three times at  the World Cup.Algeria and Egypt have each attended the World Cup two times ,while Angola, Congo Democratic Republic and Togo only participated once.

Out of these, only six countries -Nigeria, Morocco, Algeria, Cameroon, Ghana and Senegal have reached the second round of the fiesta, with Nigeria reaching the second round thrice.
At the 1990 edition in USA, Cameroon became the first African side to reach the quarter-final, after which Senegal on their first and only appearance at the World Cup stage, reached the quarter-final at the 2002 edition held Korea/Japan. Ghana also reached the quarter-final at the 2010 edition held in South Africa.
Africa also had its worst result at the World Cup during its early days of appearing at the global soccer event, as Zaire were hammered 9-0 by Yugoslavia in their second group match at the 1970 edition.
Asamoah Gyan of Ghana’s Black Stars tops the chart of African players that have scored at the World Cup with six goals, and is followed by Cameroon’s Roger Milla who scored five, while Samuel Eto’o and Bouba Diop of Senegal each scored three goals.

It is on record that four of Nigerian players that scored at the World Cup have two goals each. They are Daniel Amokachie, Emmanuel Amunike, Kalu Uche and Ahmed Musa.
All of the 13 African representatives at the World Cup have played 139 matches, won 26 matches, lost 66, drew 45, scored 119 goals and conceded 204 goals. The total number of points garnered from the 139 matches is 113.
The 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil marked the first time more than one African team went beyond the group stages.
Performance in Brazil
While Ghana and Cameroon both collected disappointing results (apart from Ghana’s 2-2 draw with later champions Germany, which saw them becoming the only team not to lose against the Germans in the entire tournament) and eventually ended fourth in their group, Ivory Coast were also knocked out in the first round after a doubtful last-minute penalty kick against Greece and ended third in Group C, above Japan, whom they had defeated 2-1 in their first match.

Africa’s pride, however, was saved by both Nigeria and Algeria. The Nigerians kicked off their Group F campaign with a disappointing 0-0 draw against Iran, before eventually defeating debutants Bosnia and Herzegovina 1-0. Stephen Keshi’s team went down 3-2 to later finalists Argentina in their final match, leaving them on the brink of elimination, but Iran lost to the Bosnians 3-1 and Nigeria went through to the Round of 16 for the third time in history, after 1998 and 1994.
Algeria lost 2-1 to a strong Belgium in their opening match in Group H, a loss which was followed by an unexpected 4-2 victory over the Korean Republic in Porto Alegre in their second match. In their final Group H encounter, a hard-won 1-1 draw with Russia was enough to send the North Africans through to the next round.
In the Round of 16, both African teams fell just short to beat the likes of France (Nigeria) and Germany (Algeria), but the fact that two African nations had reached that far, was a reason to be optimistic about the future of African football.
During the 2014 edition, Ghana’s Asamoah Gyan became Africa’s all-time leading top scorer at the FIFA World Cup, having scored six goals in three World Cups, thus exceeding the five goals scored by  Cameroon veteran Roger Milla.