Africa Football – The Great Divide

AFRICA FOOTBALL – THE GREAT DIVIDE

Since 2004 when the powers that be changed the name and the format of the competition, the CAF Confederation Cup has been won 18 times. Of these 18 wins, only five have come from outside the North Africa region, known as UNAF to those in the know. TP Mazembe of the Democratic Republic of the Congo accounted for two of the non-UNAF triumphs.

The CAF Champions League is the other, more prestigious club competition in African football. Since 2004, UNAF clubs have taken this trophy home no less than 13 times. TP Mazembe was again involved in disrupting the flow by winning the cup three times during this period. Mamelodi Sundowns of South Africa and Nigeria’s Enyimba being the other two non-North Africa clubs to lift the accolade.

In the year of our Lord 2022, the draw for the quarterfinals of the CAF Champions League had six clubs from North Africa, three of them will be in the semi-final with one guaranteed spot in the final. Five North African clubs went into the quarter-final draw for the CAF Confederation Cup. Morocco has had at least two clubs in the semifinals of continental club competitions for the last four years.

By now, you would have noticed an obvious dominance by one region over the African football landscape. North Africa rules when it comes to African football. Why? The very short answer will involve money, but let’s be adventurous and explore the other reasons why the UNAF region is way ahead of the rest of Africa, and more importantly, why the status quo may remain as is for years to come.

The phrase, “it’s just not worth it,” became very popular with South African coaches involved in continental club competitions in the early 2000s. The now-defunct Bidvest Wits, or Wits University as it was known back then, used to show disinterest to a point of fielding weakened teams in the CAF Confederation Cup. Roger De Sa, who was the coach at Wits, was involved in an abandoned trip to Angola while coaching Ajax Cape Town.

Interestingly, De Sa speaks perfect Portuguese which should have made communication with a club from Angola easy. South African clubs simply did not see CAF competitions as the main priority.  

Even the South African fans were on the bandwagon that saw African club competitions as a burden and distraction from the more prestigious local league. At the time, most South African footyheads thought the local league was the richest and most talented league in Africa, and some still do. There would be great noise for clubs to forget about Africa and get on with the business of winning the Soweto Derby. It did not help that the clubs that went to South Africa for these games were from so-called poorer countries and were virtually unknown.

Orlando Pirates FC had already won the Champions League in 1995, followed up by Nelson Mandela handing over the Africa Cup of Nations to Bafana Bafana Neil Tovey in 1996. As far as South Africans were concerned, they already ruled Africa and it was a waste of time to send teams into the continent for prize money perceived to be peanuts by all and sundry.

I go on about South Africa because it was arguably the only country that could match the North Africans in money terms. The South African economy was strong enough to develop football structures rivaling those in North Africa. They didn’t. The lack of interest in African club competitions by South African football authorities allowed the North African grip to be firmer at a time when it was supposed to face a very strong challenge from the south.

The typical North African player is developed to play football in their country of birth, only the very best players are exported to Europe. When I say Europe, I mean the top five leagues of Europe. A player that shows potential in other parts of Africa is shipped off to Europe, any part of Europe. Countries are quite happy to call up players from the third division of Norway for national team duties. These players then come up against an Egypt team, for example, that features 10 locally-based players, and loses.

The only club outside Northern Africa to make it to the semi-finals of the CAF Champions League in 2022 is coached by Alexandre Santos. Santos spent time coaching in the lower and junior leagues of Portugal. He was the Assistant Manager at Al Ahly of Egypt in 2015. The 45-year-old coach believes the type of players in Southern Africa is different from those in Northern Africa.

“Here in the South, we have players who play more of the street style of football. We have stylish players who do more of the showboating. In North Africa, the players are more tactical and very well developed for the game of football. North Africa has bigger budgets and can give a player what he wants. Our players from the South can see a better path to get to Europe by playing for North African clubs,” explains Santos.   

Between them, Al Ahly and Zamalek lifted the CAF Champions League five times from the year 2000 to 2010. During that time Egypt won the Africa Cup of Nations three times in a row with players from those two clubs. North Africa sends only the best players overseas, the rest of Africa sends potential.

It is an achievement for a player from South Africa, Central Africa, and East Africa to go and play in North Africa. Very few players from North Africa have made the great trek south and smiled about it.

The issue of player migration leads me to my next point, infrastructure and development. I can count on one hand the number of clubs that own stadiums in the West, East, and South of Africa. I can use the unused fingers on that same hand to count the number of countries with a thriving Under-21 league. Algeria, just to name one North African country, has two Under-21 leagues running as you read this. The training facilities for those players in the Under-21 league are better than 90% of the premier division clubs in southern Africa.

“We are babies in football compared to those guys,” said Cavin Johnson after the club he was coaching at the time, Supersport United had just finished playing Tunisian side ES Sahel in the CAF Confederation Cup. Babies cannot compete with adults in football.  

Cavin Johnson was part of the highly successful Al Ahly coaching team led by Pitso Mosimane before he had to return to South Africa due to personal reasons. Johnson has not seen a great deal of change in the gap between South African clubs and those in the North.   

National teams from the rest of Africa fare slightly better against North African nations. West African players find their way to Europe by any means necessary. Some start out as restaurant employees while looking for a team. Others are taken in by agents and spend months in the murky fields of small European countries. The lucky ones come through the mostly French-funded academies dotted across West Africa. Those that make it to the top leagues are then able to return for the big national tournaments and give those countries a big advantage.

Generation Foot in Senegal produced a conveyor belt of players that are sent to the French leagues. A certain Sadio Mane is a product of the Generation Foot player manufacturing line. Generation Foot has made no impact in continental club football, despite having the cream of Senegalese football pass through their doors over the years. The main focus is on exporting young players to France.

David Oku, a journalist and radio host in Nigeria says it is very rare to find a good player in the local leagues of that country.

“Why would a player stay in Nigeria? Any player that is talented immediately leaves for Europe or Asia. It does not matter if he ends up playing in division five there, as long as he has left Nigeria. There is nothing here for our players. The investment into local football is too low for the clubs to be competitive,” says Oku who traveled to Cameroon for the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations.

This rush to escape the country partly explains Nigerian clubs’ decline in the CAF club competitions.    

East, Central, and Southern Africa have not been able to get players into Europe with the same regularity as West Africa. Countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo did use strong ties with France to get a good number of players into the French leagues and that has helped the national team get in amongst the North Africans with good results. South Africa had that adrenalin rush just after democracy was attained and that was that.

The North Africans have better development structures, better facilities, better run leagues, and more money compared to the rest of Africa, but these are not the arsenal at their disposal. Over the years North African clubs have used a very potent weapon to stay well ahead and on top, intimidation. North African clubs have long been feared by the rest of the continent, and this fear has been used to the fullest. Clubs from the North are masters at complaining about every little detail before any inter-club game takes place. They will complain about the accommodation, transport, training facilities, and very importantly the refereeing officials. A good way to look at this is to say that North African clubs practice due diligence when it comes to preparation for football matches against clubs from other countries. Every single detail is checked as soon as the draw or announcement is made. Anything found to be below the desired level is noted and letters of complaint are sent with enough noise to capture the entire continent.

North Africa’s dominance in African football, especially with club competitions, is set to continue for a long time to come. The gap is simply too wide for it to be closed within a few years. There is a sprinkling of clubs with the financial muscle to compete for now. The current Confederation of African Football, CAF president, Patrice Motsepe has poured more than enough money into Mamelodi Sundowns to keep the club up there with the North Africans on the actual football pitch. However, the South Africans remain miles behind in terms of infrastructure. The Mamelodi Sundowns training hub is only good enough for a second or third division side in the North of Africa. The other hope for the rest of Africa remains DRC’s TP Mazembe who do have their own stadium.

Motsepe has been trying to take over a municipal stadium in Mamelodi for some time now, but the officials have allegedly been blocking him. The stadium is now in ruins, but they still won’t let him fix it for the club to take over.

I must mention that CAF is going to launch that Super League that was a stillborn in Europe a while ago, very soon. The CAF Super League will be dominated by North African teams and if it is not done with the utmost care, will only serve to widen the African football divide.