The climax of the Premier League season postponed because there’s no referee? Manchester United masquerading as the England national team? Barcelona unable to play in the Champions League because they can’t afford the flights? These highly unlikely situations represent the murky reality that frequently mars African club football, far removed from the glitz and glamour that top flight Europe dazzles us with every week.
It’s an odd situation considering that in no other place is the old cliché ‘football is a religion’ more true than Africa. A continent brimming with talent and home to some of world football’s biggest names, the obsession is apparent everywhere; from the images of Carlos Tevez emblazoned onto the back of city buses to the huge numbers of people that crush into local bars to watch the Premier League every week. This enthusiasm is very much at odds with the attitude that Africans place towards their own league much the product of the running of their football federations.
Corruption in particular is the most notable blight on the domestic game with the famous Cameroonian goalkeeper Joseph Antoine Bell claiming that ninety out of every hundred dollars disappears into private pockets with little or no reinvestment in the clubs themselves or the wider national game. One particularly shocking example can be seen in the Zimbabwean club side, Monomatapa, who made a brief tour of Asia pretending to be Zimbabwe’s national XI. They played a number of games; all claimed as full internationals, and were forced to deliberately lose games by set scores under the instructions of Jonathan Musavengana, a member of the Zimbabwean national football federation, who was in an arrangement with Asian gambling figures.
Mismanagement and incompetence is also regularly a feature of the game and a big part of alienating local fans. In a Ugandan top flight Bells Super League game last year, two of the big name sides match between Victors and Express had to be postponed because, due to an ‘administrative error’, FUFA (The Ugandan Football association) had forgotten to appoint a referee for the game. Errors such as these undermine the credibility of the leagues and alienate the sponsors and fans that are the real heartbeat of any successful sporting franchise.
The result of these sorts of issues has been the decline in the following of local clubs and national leagues particularly as a result of the bright lights syndrome encouraged by the easy access to premier European football through the means of satellite TV. It’s a story that’s been repeated across the world, not only in Africa – in India for example, national club football was the second most viewed sport in the whole country; the introduction of satellite TV in the nineties demonstrated the limits of both talent and quality leading to an immediate decline in viewers.
As a result of this many of the African domestic leagues are impoverished and struggling. Frequently winners of the poorer domestic leagues will win qualification to the major African club competitions and then be unable to fund the traveling costs that such tournaments require. For example, the Victors (a major Uganda club side) entered debts of 20 million Ugandan shilling because one of their CAF Confederation Cup games (the African equivalent of the Europa League) was cancelled and they had to pay for additional flights: a highly unsustainable situation for clubs with such limited financial resources.
The situation portrayed above is not a universal image of African club football. Many leagues, notably the South African and Egyptian, attract high numbers of passionate fans and are well sponsored. However, in many cases the paradox between these small domestic leagues and there rivals in Europe is significant. Reform and the monitoring of nations’ football federations would seem to be essential if the game is to progress and begin to re-engage local populations with the home game and allow the continued diversification of football beyond Europe’s boundaries.
Will Smith
exeposedev 