African teams in Qatar

Pintu

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4 matches, no goals for Africa - can Ghana save the day ?
Cameroon should have had a penalty there… Tough, but they haven‘t been brilliant going forward recently. They’re just a sold team, but apparently not solid enough to hold off strong European sides. Switzerland are very well experienced at this level. They made Nations league semifinal 3 years ago and were one penalty shootout away from Euro semifinal last year despite playing 10 against 11 Spanish (this after knocking out France). And they went on to qualify for the WC top of their group ahead of Italy…
 

Oldham

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I find the African teams a bit boring... the Africa Cup was not exciting.
 

crossy1686

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What’s happened to the African talent? Is it harder to get a move to Europe at a young age now?

This used to be a rich talent bed in the past. Now it seems like they just try to find french and English lads who can’t get in their national teams but have foreign heritage.
 

the_cliff

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There is a problem with the African teams, especially in terms of playing in the final third and being lethal in front of goal. If you look at Africa's performances so far they have all played decent teams and you can't say they were out played by the countries they were up against, Senegal and Cameroon were both wasteful in the final third and ended up losing but it was never a one sided affair, same can be said with Morocco and Tunisia's performances.

What’s happened to the African talent? Is it harder to get a move to Europe at a young age now?

This used to be a rich talent bed in the past. Now it seems like they just try to find french and English lads who can’t get in their national teams but have foreign heritage.
I discussed this in the world cup 48 teams thread. The problem with Africa is we don't have any consistent teams playing in world cups, every world cup there are different teams going to the world cup, this is because there's only 5 teams going when there is around 10 teams of similar strength and ability. The last 2 AFCONs before the world cup 3 teams in the semi finals and one in each final has failed to qualify for the subsequent world cup. This would be unheard of in any other continental competition (Italy is an outlier). This is mainly due to the way teams qualify which relies on a one off playoff game. Anything can happen in a one off game and it results in the best teams sometimes not qualifying for the world cup.

The problem with this is African teams rely on the world cup in terms of investment for their football infrastructure and in their national teams. Each FA receives 9mill for playing in the world cup and it gets higher the further you reach. For the majority of African teams this is a big deal. It's much easier for African teams to rely on their diaspora when there's no constant and consistent income from FIFA as you won't consistently play in the world cup. Therefore, investment in football in Africa is less.
 

Sparky Rhiwabon

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What’s happened to the African talent? Is it harder to get a move to Europe at a young age now?

This used to be a rich talent bed in the past. Now it seems like they just try to find french and English lads who can’t get in their national teams but have foreign heritage.
I would think that quite a lot of talent has migrated out of Africa, whether that’s themselves, their parent or grandparents and now choose to represent their adopted country rather than the country of their roots. Richer countries won’t suffer from this as much, in fact they’ll benefit from the immigration.
 

Rasendori

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I was gutted when Kudus came off, at different stages of the game he shrugged off the press from Bruno, Neves and Bernardo Silva and allowed Ghana to transition from the second to the third and fourth phase. And with Ayew coming off that was a major blow in terms of seniority. Going forward, I would like to think Kofi Kyereh, Gideon Mensah get starts in the next two games
I mentioned the above Thursday 24th and today Gideon Mensah was introduced in the starting berth. Gideon played a role in Kudus' winner today and his offensive prowess brought out the best in Jordan Ayew. Great call from Addo to make adjustments by letting him start.
 

Rood

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Morocco and Ghana deserve to qualify

Tunisia Cameroon unlikely

Sénégal possible
 

FootballHQ

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Surely Morocco can't eff things up now....

Ghana will be so pumped for the Uruguay game after 2010, so many good final game matches in store at this World cup. However Uruguay are that sort of team who could easily grind out a 1-0 win.

Possible it could be Morocco-Ghana last 16 tie if Croatia-Belgium ends in a draw.
 

Pintu

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Possible it could be Morocco-Ghana last 16 tie if Croatia-Belgium ends in a draw.
If Ghana qualify as second they will play the winner of Brazil’s group (Brazil)

If Morocco qualify they’ll be up against Germany or Spain.

Senegal also can still make it. And in that event, their most likely opponent will be England.
 

kode

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:eek:At Morocco, Senegal, Wales, Tunisia, etc. there are a ton of foreign born in their squads.
if you are foreign born with a parent of that country you are willing to represent how that makes you a lesser citizen? how that compares with someone with no parents from that country he represents apart the fact he was born/raised there?
 

P-Nut

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Is this supposed to be a bad thing?
I don't thinknits meant to be anything, just interesting seeing how many are actually born in foreign lands.

I'm actually surprised at how few that France squad has. Remember a few years ago they had quite a few born elsewhere.
 

GazTheLegend

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What’s happened to the African talent? Is it harder to get a move to Europe at a young age now?
Lots of the "young" talent turned out to be 21 year olds who battered the u-16's and of course they looked a class above.

Heres a fairly good interview on the subject:

https://www.sportbible.com/football...ne-ndaw-admits-he-lied-about-his-age-20200612

Some European clubs started insisting on some fairly controversial age checking methods like ultrasonography to detect bone age.
 

Rood

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Is this supposed to be a bad thing?
No - Why would it be?


I don't thinknits meant to be anything, just interesting seeing how many are actually born in foreign lands.

I'm actually surprised at how few that France squad has. Remember a few years ago they had quite a few born elsewhere.
I suppose over time, many
are now 2nd generation so born in France with roots elsewhere- hence many French born in other teams
 
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Glorio

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if you are foreign born with a parent of that country you are willing to represent how that makes you a lesser citizen? how that compares with someone with no parents from that country he represents apart the fact he was born/raised there?
Great point. Maybe they should do one of how many players are of parentage outside the nation they're playing for.
Lot's of folks I know are raised according to their parents' heritage.
 

villain

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I don't thinknits meant to be anything, just interesting seeing how many are actually born in foreign lands.

I'm actually surprised at how few that France squad has. Remember a few years ago they had quite a few born elsewhere.
I think it makes perfect sense especially for smaller nations.
France, like England/Belgium/Germany has had a few generations of immigrants now, so it’s not too surprising to see so few who were born elsewhere.
 

giorno

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I think it makes perfect sense especially for smaller nations.
France, like England/Belgium/Germany has had a few generations of immigrants now, so it’s not too surprising to see so few who were born elsewhere.
France, England and Germany never really called up a lot of players born outside their countries either. You can maybe make a case for France at one point, but only if you count players born in overseas French territories like french guyana, guadalupe, etc...otherwise, we're talking no more than 3-5 non-french born players...

These countries didn't really start calling up players until they were 2nd or 3rd generation or more. It makes sense too: the biggest difference between the big european and south american football superpowers and the rest of the world come down to population and infrastructure for the most part. So historically it'd be unlikely for these countries to call up players who weren't born there - italy in the 30s to 50s being the big outlier with naturalized argentinians of italian ancestry - since it's unlikely these players would be better than what they already had "locally". Immigration also took a while to really take root with immigrants being integrated into their football systems, which again, means guys like Vieira, Makelele would be outliers, since there's so many more french-born players compared to kids who moved there really young


Back to the african teams, have to say i'm somewhat surprised that ghana beat south korea, they're better than i thought honestly, while senegal looks worse than i expected. The others are pretty much performing to expectations. Morocco will make it through, pre-tournament i expected senegal to make it through as well, now i don't, and i think Morocco will be the only team to make it to the R16. Sorry @villain
 

Traub

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Senegal losing Mane has massively hampered any chance they had of making it far. Extremely unfortunate.
 

steve zizou

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So we're entering matchday 3 and all 5 African countries are in a position to qualify which is unprecedented. All the teams have given a good account of themselves. And at his point i'll say there's little to no gap between the top teams in Africa and the 2nd tier teams in Europe and South America. Only major let down so far has been Tunisia's loss to Australia but then again Tunisia has always been a disspointment as world cups. Senegal, Morocco and Ghana all have it in their hands. Cameroon and Tunisia face uphill tasks but anything can happen in this world cup.
 

sincher

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Ghana and Cameroon have looked lively in attack but dodgy in defence... great to watch, but probably not going to go far like that unfortunately. Can see Uruguay beating Ghana, but hope not.

Senegal are a weird one. With Mane, I think they would be quite tasty but without him, not sure at all. Suspect they won't go through.

Morocco are a really decent side I think.
 

Ish

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Speaking from mainly a South African POV, many of our talents disappear even before they're able to showcase their ability. Poverty, crime and economic turmoil (record high unemployment, corruption etc.) in this country (and we're still one of the more fortunate countries on the continent) means a lot of our talents are filtered out to crime/other things before they even get going.

Our legacy of apartheid also makes it difficult to pursue a good living (education) and football at the same time, whilst cricket and rugby you are basically forced to go through the tertiary level education system to turn pro. (Tbf, i think football is like that in a lot of the developing world).

Overall, football is under invested in here at grassroots (corruption being a major contributor), compared to the other sports (we compete at the very top of rugby and cricket - sort of, still). A lack of infrastructure for development, malnutrition etc. only exacerbates this. I remember being at school and being forced to play rugby, hockey (outfield) and cricket, versus football. I needed to pursue my love of football at club level, outside of my school hours/commitments etc.

I know we had a very good team over the decades but the country has, overall, just become a bigger struggle. Even with someone like Motsepe investing in the local league and some of our teams doing well continentally, we don't seemingly export enough players to compete in Europe and the gulf in quality in our local leagues versus the other top leagues are just way too big.

Even with the 2 "major" sports in this country - rugby and cricket. You find more and more players going to play abroad now for the money, as the cashflow and sponsors have dried up here, even for them! We used to have a rule where we wouldn't pick overseas based players for rugby/cricket sides, but that has also long since changed (I think the same applied/applies to the All Blacks, as an example). Why would companies sponsor local sports when half the population are starving (bit of a hyperbole but not far off)? Simply put, money isn't here and on the rest of the continent.
 

villain

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France, England and Germany never really called up a lot of players born outside their countries either. You can maybe make a case for France at one point, but only if you count players born in overseas French territories like french guyana, guadalupe, etc...otherwise, we're talking no more than 3-5 non-french born players...

These countries didn't really start calling up players until they were 2nd or 3rd generation or more. It makes sense too: the biggest difference between the big european and south american football superpowers and the rest of the world come down to population and infrastructure for the most part. So historically it'd be unlikely for these countries to call up players who weren't born there - italy in the 30s to 50s being the big outlier with naturalized argentinians of italian ancestry - since it's unlikely these players would be better than what they already had "locally". Immigration also took a while to really take root with immigrants being integrated into their football systems, which again, means guys like Vieira, Makelele would be outliers, since there's so many more french-born players compared to kids who moved there really young


Back to the african teams, have to say i'm somewhat surprised that ghana beat south korea, they're better than i thought honestly, while senegal looks worse than i expected. The others are pretty much performing to expectations. Morocco will make it through, pre-tournament i expected senegal to make it through as well, now i don't, and i think Morocco will be the only team to make it to the R16. Sorry @villain
Honestly I was expecting us to win zero games, so considering we won one & came close to drawing with Portugal we’ve exceeded my expectations. It’s a new team and they haven’t played much together, with time we should be better by the next African cup of nations.
also we’ve got a terrible draw, because even if we do qualify we’d have to face Brazil I think so that was never gonna work. Luck is involved a lot of times when it comes to tournaments and we didn’t get a good roll of the dice this time, but at least we haven’t embarrassed ourselves :)
 

Lay

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So we're entering matchday 3 and all 5 African countries are in a position to qualify which is unprecedented. All the teams have given a good account of themselves. And at his point i'll say there's little to no gap between the top teams in Africa and the 2nd tier teams in Europe and South America. Only major let down so far has been Tunisia's loss to Australia but then again Tunisia has always been a disspointment as world cups. Senegal, Morocco and Ghana all have it in their hands. Cameroon and Tunisia face uphill tasks but anything can happen in this world cup.
I think only Morocco will go through in the end. Senegal have the second best chance but I think Ecuador are better
 

Ramos

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10 games so far: 3 wins, 3 draws and 4 losses.

Much better than in 2018. At this stage they had 2 wins, 1 draw and 7 losses.
 

Rood

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I think only Morocco will go through in the end. Senegal have the second best chance but I think Ecuador are better
I think Ghana have more chance than Senegal - time to avenge the Suarez handball !
 

giorno

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Well it seems Senegal has finally showed up. And just in time too
 

Lay

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Congrats to Senegal. I didn’t think they’d be able to do it without Mane, but great result
 

Red the Bear

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Doing well which is great to see, hope they do even better than what they've already done.
 

The Corinthian

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I think Ghana have more chance than Senegal - time to avenge the Suarez handball !
I hope Ghana destroy Uruguay, and the camera pans to the stands and we see Asamoah Gyan celebrating with a giant foam hand.
 

The Original

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There is a problem with the African teams, especially in terms of playing in the final third and being lethal in front of goal. If you look at Africa's performances so far they have all played decent teams and you can't say they were out played by the countries they were up against, Senegal and Cameroon were both wasteful in the final third and ended up losing but it was never a one sided affair, same can be said with Morocco and Tunisia's performances.


I discussed this in the world cup 48 teams thread. The problem with Africa is we don't have any consistent teams playing in world cups, every world cup there are different teams going to the world cup, this is because there's only 5 teams going when there is around 10 teams of similar strength and ability. The last 2 AFCONs before the world cup 3 teams in the semi finals and one in each final has failed to qualify for the subsequent world cup. This would be unheard of in any other continental competition (Italy is an outlier). This is mainly due to the way teams qualify which relies on a one off playoff game. Anything can happen in a one off game and it results in the best teams sometimes not qualifying for the world cup.

The problem with this is African teams rely on the world cup in terms of investment for their football infrastructure and in their national teams. Each FA receives 9mill for playing in the world cup and it gets higher the further you reach. For the majority of African teams this is a big deal. It's much easier for African teams to rely on their diaspora when there's no constant and consistent income from FIFA as you won't consistently play in the world cup. Therefore, investment in football in Africa is less.
I'd say that's probably not the real issue. You obviously can't run any football system, professionally, with an investment of 9 million USD (or whatever currency), every 4 years so losing this is not why African football isn't developing--if it is true that it isn't. You'll find that most African nations are able to invest a lot more than that into football without FIFA support.

If anything, I would suggest that the increased investment into professionalism from younger ages has meant the introduction of a new, more rigid style of play designed to mimic European football's tactics and organisation.

So, in my experience, dribbling, for example, is very quickly discouraged in favour of moving the ball quickly.

The problems
 
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Ramos

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With 4 games won they have already equaled the highest number of matches won by African teams at a World Cup (2010).
 

Pintu

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With 4 games won they have already equaled the highest number of matches won by African teams at a World Cup (2010).
Africa had 2 teams in the second round of 2014, Nigeria and Algeria. They lost to Germany and France.

Now there is still a reasonable chance for 3... I wonder if that has ever happened?