African teams have no chance at the World Cup

With the most elite soccer event on the planet underway in various cities of Brazil in its early stages, some of the African representatives have already been eliminated. Cameroun was virtually eliminated on Wednesday after they lost their second game in the group. This means their game against Brazil on Monday will be a formality and this fixture will be of no significance to Cameroun. Others like Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroun and Algeria have all under-performed. There is no favourite African team to win this competition but at least soccer fans on the continent expect a sign of improvement. In the history of world cup, there is no African team that has ever reached the final and semi-finals of this competition. Only Ghana came so close during 2010 world cup in South Africa where they narrowly lost to Uruguay in the quarter-final stage. During this game, Ghana was dominant and the black-stars were well placed to edge past Uruguay and become the first African side to qualify for semi-finals of the world cup. But hand-ball controversy by Uruguay star striker Louis Suarez towards the end of the game denied Ghana a chance to advance. Before 2010, Ghana had won the African under-17 and world under-20 youth championships respectively. Like any other African team, the black-stars performance is on decline. The golden generation comprised of players like Andrew Ayew, Kevin-prince Boateng, Gyan Asamoah, Jordan Ayew, Kwado Asamoah, Michael Essien are no longer playing at top level. For example many soccer fans expected Ghana to beat USA during their recent fixture in 2014 world cup. I met local soccer fans in some Jewish corners of Jerusalem who were contemplating to buy bet tickets for Ghana win Over USA based on their previous head-to-head statistics. I advised them to abandon the idea and told them Ghana had no chance against USA based on tactical philosophies and sporting progress from both teams. USA has had a steady improvement and overall national team performance has been good since 2010 where as Ghana has suffered slump in performance since 2010. Ghana beat USA 2-1 during 2006 World Cup in Germany, and the black stars again won by 2-1 goals during 2010 world cup in South Africa. People had high hopes in Ghana a head of USA based on these historical meetings. During the ongoing FIFA 2014 World Cup, USA beat Ghana by 2-1 goals in their opening group G fixture to shorten Ghana’s presence in Brazil. USA coach Jurgen Klinsman offensive strategy has proven fruitful on several occasions and has put up a team capable of competing at the world stage. Games between USA and Ghana are always very competitive given good physical strength of players from both teams. Ghana is placed in a very tricky group comprised of Germany, USA, and Portugal. Ivory Coast was placed in a favourable group and Ivorians are expected to qualify for the knock-out phase of the world cup this time due to the fact that they managed to beat Japan during their opening group C fixture. The Ivorians pose with rich-talented squad plying professional football in elite European football leagues with big names like Yaya Toure, Didier Drogba, Kolo Toure, Didier Zokora, and Solomon Kalou among others. Ivory Coast is placed in group C alongside Colombia, Japan and Greece; a seemingly more favourable group as compared in previous world cup group opponents. Though Ivory Coast managed to beat Japan during their first game of the competition, the Ivorians are not in good physical condition to compete with the best teams at the world cup. Other teams like Algeria and Nigeria will likely face early exit from the competition. Nigeria has displayed the worst football ever in their world cup history. The super-eagles game against Iran was not good as they failed to break Iran defense. They had no coordination in attack and were very sluggish in-front of the goal. I think poor performance at the world cup events and lack of general improvement in African teams should be attributed to poor technical abilities. Though Africa has been producing elite players, there is real lack of managerial elites or coaches from the continent. Possibly there is shortage of talented or skilled coaches on the continent as this might contribute to the decline of the standards of the game or lack of improvement.