I mentioned in my blog ‘Africans at the Palace’ a few weeks ago that Palace striker Kwesi Appiah had signed up to play in the inaugural iPAY2PLAY charity football tournament.

The brainchild of former Ghana U21 International Papa Agyemang and Peterborough United‘s Gabriel Zakuani, iPAY2PLAY aims to raise money for HIV awareness projects in developing areas of Africa through sponsorship, particularly by means of professional footballer and celebrity endorsement.

The first ever tournament is scheduled to kick off Monday 21^st May at 1pm at Lucozade Powerleague, Wembley Stadium.

Each participant will pay towards their place and also raise money.

TeamIMANI alongside Tackle Africa (www.tackleafrica.org )will provide a platform for participants to raise funds to help bring change to the lives that really need it.

TackleAfrica deliver HIV education through football coaching in six African countries, helping save lives through the beautiful game. Peterborough and Congo player Gabi Zakuani and TeamIMANI will be visiting Ghana with TackleAfrica in June.

I’ve actually had the huge privilege to visit Uganda, Zambia and Kenya to help deliver TackleAfrica projects in those countries, alongside a team of other UK-based, TackleAfrica trained volunteers.  TA have developed an amazingly innovative training mannual which combines basic football drills such as passing or shooting, with HIV education messages, and I’ve seen first hand how well this works. It provides behaviour changing education in some of the communities in sub-Saharan Africa worse hit by the HIV/AIDS pandemic.  The overwhelming love for football, and the English game in particular means that TackleAfrica have a fantastic platform for delivering these projects to an audience that laps it up.

The iPAY2PLAY tournament has managed to land some major players from the Premier League and international areas, and in addition to our Kwesi, the long list of players and celebrities is below. Click on their names to donate to their fundraising pages.

iPAY2PLAY will consist of four 5-a-side teams; three of which are comprised of professional players & celebrities and one of a corporate sponsors. Teams will play each other once, after which there will be a further two matches between the first and second-placed teams and third and fourth-placed teams to determine the Champions and third and fourth places respectively.

iPAY2PLAY will be covered by Sky Sports, BBC Sport, VOX Africa TV, The Voice Newspaper and many more.

Partners include: TeamIMANI, The Sports Clinic, Tackle Africa, Lucozade Powerleague and Everyday I’m Tackling.

If anyone wants to get involved, there are opportunities for much needed corporate sponsorship.

If your company are interested in entering a team to play against professional footballers, contact tom@tackleafrica.org

To donate £20 or more, text ‘IPAY12’ and your amount to 70070 or visit www.justgiving.com/ipay2play

TeamIMANI® (Swahili: Faith) is a London-based sports and lifestyle apparel brand which aims to transcend religious and political divisions, instead promoting the idea of unity, inspiration through faith alone.

www.teamimani.com

https://twitter.com/TeamIMANI

http://www.facebook.com/TeamIMANI

http://tackleafrica.org/

With the announcement that Kwesi Appiah will be raising funds for UK based charity TackleAfrica in the Pay2Play event in May, I thought I’d write this week’s blog about Palace players with African heritage.

Kwesi himself is of mixed Ghanian and English descent, which might explain his eagerness to get involved with the TackleAfrica. They run projects across several countries in sub-Saharan African, including Ghana, delivering HIV education to the most vulnerable of communities through the medium of football.

Kwesi has done his time around the lower echelons of the football pyramid, before hitting the big time by joining the mighty Palace. Bearing in mind the genetic make up of the areas around South London, it’s no surprise that Kwesi is the latest in a long line of Palace players with African connections. Here’s my summary of a select few:

Gavin Nebbelling

Big Neb was one of the first players that I used to watch at Palace in the late 1980′s, tightening up the defence along side legend Jim Cannon, or anchoring the midfield. For some unknown reason he always reminded me of Neighbours’ Jim Robinson, but he was actually of South African rather than Aussie descent. Nebbelling actually played his entire pro career in England, after a youth career in Johannesburg with Arcadia Shepherds. He made over 150 appearances for the Eagles before moving onto Fulham and Preston, with a smattering of loan moves in between.

Kagisho Dikgacoi

‘KG’ was Dougie Freedman’s biggest signing when he purchased him from Fulham for £600k last summer after a successful loan spell. Unfortunately the South African international has not quite lived up to his early Palace promised and appears to have been carrying a little extra timber in recent weeks. A defensive midfielder, KG has not quite demonstrated the robustness needed to play that role in the Championship, nor a particular willingness to create or score, although the highlight of his Palace career to date has to be his Zidane-esque goal last term, stumbling onto the ball and pirouetting past the keeper. An established international, KG has 39 caps for Bafana Bafana, scoring 2 goals.

Victor Moses

Victor Moses became the latest high profile graduate from the famous Crystal Palace academy to be sold onto a Premier League team when Palace slumped into administration in 2010. Moses was Palace’s most saleable asset and despite optimistic links with Barcelona and Real Madrid, ended being sold to Wigan for £2.5m. Moses blasted his way through the youth ranks at Palace having arrived from Nigeria as an orphaned asylum seeker.

He’s actually been capped at all age groups from Under 16-21 for England (golden boot winner 2007 U17 Euro Championships), but has recently been flirting with representing his country of birth, Nigeria, at senior level. He made his debut for the appropriately nickname, Eagles, in a friendly against Rwanda in February. This summer will be a big one for Victor Moses. Having recently put in some headline making performances, he has just announced his intention not to renew his contract with Wigan, leaving open the opportunity for a move to a bigger club. Barca and Real are unlikely to be calling but Liverpool, Newcastle or Swansea may come be more realistic destinations.

Wilfred Zaha

The new Victor Moses? If VicMo was the last academy product to be sold on for big bucks, Wilfred Zaha could be the next. Another African immigrant, Zaha was actually born in Cote d’Ivoire and played youth football with ASEC Mimosas who also spawned the careers of luminaries such as Bonaventure Kalou, Didier Zokora, Emmanuel Eboué, Gervinho, Salomon Kalou, and Yaya Touré. Like Moses, Zaha has been tipped for big things, and will surely end up in the Premier League before too long, with Palace, or more likely a team already there.

Bolton made an embarrassingly low bid for Zaha on transfer deadline day, but should the worst happened and Zaha is sold on, Palace fans would like to see the player have loftier aspirations than Bolton, a trotter, he ain’t. Unlike when Moses was sold, Palace aren’t in a position where they will be force to sell, and Zaha is a year into a 5 year contract. Hopefully adding to his tally of games and goals in the Championship will see him develop into a top player. Zaha has already won England U21 caps, and has been shortlisted for Team GB, but it remains to be seen whether he sticks with his current nation or returns to his homeland to realise international ambitions. By the way Owen Coyle….he’s just too good for you.

For more information on the type of work that TA do, and the areas they are involved in check out their website: http://tackleafrica.org/highlights/what-we-do/

If you want to get involved yourself, sign up for one of TackleAfrica’s Football Marathon’s this summer – 12 hour football endurance events in London, Manchester, Lancaster, Brighton and Jersey. To sponsor Kwesi, check out his justgiving site www.justgiving.com/kwesiappiah or text KAPP 38 £10 to 70070.

More info on IPay2Play here:http://www.teamimani.co.uk/ipay2play/

There is no doubting that in the past two decades we have witnessed some fantastic sides, brilliant matches and individual performances that will live long in the memory and if you support Manchester United, you certainly have witnessed something of a golden period – with no fewer than 12 League titles that sees the Red Devils surpass Liverpool as the most successful side in England. Fergie has certainly had his challenges, notably in Arsene Wenger and Jose Mourinho, but has always managed to come back time after time to recapture their crown.

One of the great aspects of the Premier League, since its inauguration, has been the array of players plying their trade from all corners of the globe in English football, which has made the League richer for their presence within it. We have been privy to some of the very best players in the world, although it is fair to say we have witnessed some absolute shockers as well. It is fair to say that it is not necessarily down to their lack of ability, but for one reason or other their spell in England was simply a disaster.

This article is a celebration of the latter and the top 20 ‘waste of spaces’ that the Premier League has ever seen:

Click on Tomas Brolin to unveil the top 20

Walking out to play for your country should be the pinnacle for any footballer. The pride in knowing that you are representing your nation on the biggest stage is a defining moment and an honour that the majority of us can only dream of.

But with money and celebrity now the driving forces of the beautiful game, patriotism appears to have fallen by the way-side.

Players like David Beckham and Pepe Reina have both said that they will always make themselves available for the national team are a rare breed. Indeed, Beckham’s appetite and commitment to England is clear with the former captain flying across the Atlantic to be included in the squad between MLS matches.

This is a stark contrast to Kevin- Prince Boateng, who inexplicably decided to retire from the international fold aged just 24.

He joins a long list of players who have deserted their country to play more club football or even just because they are not the first name on the team sheet. Paul Scholes, Jamie Carragher, Wes Brown, Paul Robinson and Ben Foster have all relinquished their chances of selection when there was still plenty of gas left in the tanks and many more caps to be had. Robinson retired aged 30, a veritable youth for a goalkeeper, having been recalled to the squad after being left out for two years. He said it was because he didn’t want to be “third or fourth choice” keeper. This may be the case but it appears that he retired when he was brought back into the side just to revive his bruised ego.

When Scholes left the international scene he was only 29, saying it was because he missed his family during the big tournaments and while that may be the case, when he was sent a World Cup SOS from Fabio Capello, anybody that valued their national team would have been on a plane to South Africa. While many can question the Italian’s timing or decision, the fact is that he made a special request to a player he thought would make a real difference, only to have it thrown back in his face because it was not important to the midfield maestro.

And even Gary Neville, winner of 85 England caps and a player who appears to ooze passion, said in his book that playing for England was not as important as turning out for Manchester United and claimed that turning out for his country was often a “waste of time”.

“Winning for my club was always the most important thing and given a straight choice of a European Cup with United or a European Championship with England, it’s United every time.”

He says that international duty was a bonus but the stick that players would receive made him question the point of it. That attitude towards criticism is as much the problem as anything. Footballers seem to live in a bubble and believe they should be lauded and never doubted. The people that pay for tickets to come and see them are expected to keep their views silent whatever the situation. Gary Neville is a straight talking man and like him or loathe him, having read his book there are plenty of good points he makes, but if these men were truly patriotic they would feel the same disappointment as the fans and would want to prove wrong anybody that gave them stick, not whinge about it.

The award for the most despicably unpatriotic act however can only go to Kevin- Prince Boateng. Having played for Germany through all youth levels up had failed to break into the national side and his career had stagnated after an unsuccessful time at Tottenham and nothing special at Portsmouth. Seeing his chance slipping away it was declared in 2009: “due to the lack of future chances to earn a call up for his home country, he will play for Ghana in the future and that he had hoped to be part of the Ghana national team squad at the 2010 FIFA World Cup.”

After begging for a chance the Ghanaian FA pulled out all the stops to get his registration switched over and included him in their squad to South Africa and showing their faith in him. The 24-year-old then took his chance, putting in some good performances that had rarely been seen during his time in England and secured a move to AC Milan.

And having accomplished his aim of reaching the top of the game, just over a year after playing in the World Cup and with nine caps to his name, Boateng threw it all back in their faces by ending his international career.

Now that he is earning big money and playing for a big time he doesn’t care for the country that gave him a chance and did everything for him. It is pure arrogance from the money-motivated midfielder who is known for his love of expensive cars and clothes.

While his decision is sickening it is good for Ghana that he has retired so they no longer need to waste their time with a player that doesn’t care about them but the fact that some players see it as a way to make a career for themselves is infuriating.

However, national teams are not totally blameless. To gain a cap for your country meant that you were part of an exclusive club but now managers select a different team each game and throwing on players for just a couple of minutes to delay time. Even the captaincy has less importance now because it gets passed around so much during friendly matches there are very few people that don’t get the armband.

Employers will always think it should be that way because they are paying the wages but there should be something special about being selected above your peers to represent your country.

Past players would accept the club’s stance but their sense of pride in playing international football would always override this, whereas current players seem to be more concerned with their bank balance.

They have even taken to exaggerating injuries in order to avoid playing for their country because they know that they need to be playing club football if they want their extortionate wages.

Footballers are now put on the celebrity pedestal alongside musicians and actors rather than being associated with the common man. These players need to be bought back to the real world and reminded that money does not buy respect.

You can comment below or follow me on Twitter @jrobbins1991.

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The 19-year-old has represented England at under-16 and under-17 level, but pulled out of the under-21 squad last week. Despite living most of his life in the United Kingdom, the midfielder was born in Accra, and met with executive Kwesi Nyantakyi after the Black Stars 1-0 friendly defeat to Brazil at Craven Cottage on Monday.

“I have Done My Part For the Love of The country Now Lets Wait and See The Outcome……,” Frimpong stated on his Twitter account on Tuesday, and Nyantakyi confirmed the player’s decision to turn his back on England.

“Yesterday we met him after the game at Fulham at a hotel. He wants to play for Ghana. We have to apply to Fifa now – send them the documentation and wait,” the president told The Guardian.

“It is out of my hands how long they will take, but with my experience [of these matters] I expect no longer than three months and it will probably be shorter than that,” he concluded.

Frimpong is one of The Gunners’ brightest prospects, and has broken into the first team squad at the Emirates this season. He started his first competitive fixture for the London side against Liverpool earlier in the campaign, but was sent off in a 2-0 defeat for Arsene Wenger’s side.

The reaction to the FIFA leader’s comments, not least from Sir Alex Ferguson’s office door, was of overwhelming outrage, seeing as Blatter conveyed either a tenuous grasp of history, or simply the unforgivably insensitive use of the term ‘slavery’ in relation to the purportedly unfair treatment of Ronaldo. Eschewing the comparison of historical slave conditions, modern-day slavery is broadly defined as the submission to authority for the purpose of economic exploitation; in other words, a confusingly inaccurate way to describe a professional athlete’s request for the termination of his willingly signed £100,000+ a week contract with arguably the world’s largest firm, in order to make £250,000 a week playing for one of his current employer’s biggest continental competitors.

Despite a reputation for trimming unruly influences, Ferguson tirelessly convinced his star asset to remain at Old Trafford for a further season, when he ‘reluctantly’ scored 25 goals as United reached the Champions’ League final for the second consecutive year following Premier League and Carling Cup triumphs, before eventually securing his protracted move to Madrid in July of 2009. It is widely considered that Real dwarfed their original investment of £80million in terms of shirt-sale income within hours of Ronaldo’s arrival, perhaps loosely exposing the economic exploitation Blatter had referred to a year earlier. I’m going to avoid describing the multifarious allegations of a more sinister nature that have littered Blatter’s presidency, but instead focus on an issue which the Swiss was so comfortable presenting his opinion on, albeit in an erroneous context.

It seems peculiar that the individual who retains a universal scale of influence in terms of football’s governance expressed his support for player protection when each year, thousands of young and vulnerable footballers are misled and manipulated by rogue agents, taken from their homes with the false promises of wealth and stardom, and then left to fend for themselves on foreign soil when the brutal reality is hastily acknowledged. This growing army of migrant talent has become a familiar part of the landscape in several major European cities, with children as young as 9 forced to beg on the streets of Milan or sell fake Prada handbags in Paris just to survive. The outcome these youngsters are guaranteed is as far removed as possible from the glamorous dream sold by Didier Drogba and Michael Essien, whose faces adorn every billboard in the Ivory Coast and Ghana respectively, selling anything from chocolate to mobile phones. But what is driving this damaging and abusive process and what measures are being conceived to prevent its intensification?

The reality, particularly in the Ivory Coast and Ghana, where a large number of globally established footballers have been exported recently, is that the greater the success had by West African players in Europe, the vaster number of domestic Africans will believe they can follow this path. This has resulted in a substantial growth in the number of illegal football academies being established in Africa, offering children as young as six the chance to be noticed, with roughly 500 operating in Ghana’s capital, Accra, alone. Around 90% of these ‘centres’ are run by local men who claim to be ex-professional footballers, but in fact have limited experience, and are united in their shared intent on discovering the next Stephen Appiah or Asamoah Gyan; or a multi-million pound resource. Most of them charge subscription rates to the enrolled students’ parents and extended families, who, in several cases, remove them from routine schooling to allow them to concentrate on football full-time. The financial rewards reaped from having a professional footballer in the family evoke a rags to riches scenario of Hollywood proportions, so many consider the risk to their child’s education worth taking.

Continued on Page TWO

But for those actually living in the capital, and the rest of what is now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo, 1974 is meaningful for an altogether different sporting occasion. That summer, Zaire became the first team from sub-Saharan Africa to qualify for the World Cup, but their players and fans recall the tournament in West Germany with mixed feelings, despite the achievement of being the first black African representatives on global football’s grandest stage. “I was very proud, and still am, to have represented Black and Central Africa at the World Cup,” says former defender, Mwepu Ilunga. “But we had the erroneous belief that we would be returning from the World Cup as millionaires. We got back home without a penny in our pockets. Look at me now, I’m living like a tramp,” an incensed Ilunga told BBC Sport.

The retired right full-back remains bitter about several aspects of the ‘Leopards’’ campaign, most notably the fact that Zairean officials are alleged to have pocketed his and his team-mates’ wages for the tournament, something Ilunga would only discover mid-way through the group stages. The opening game saw Zaire defeated 2-0 by Scotland, but Ilunga claims that the players were told that they wouldn’t be paid at all, prior to the next match against Yugoslavia. “Before the Yugoslavia match we learnt that we were not going to be paid, so we refused to play,” claims the defender, who has since become a cult footballing icon for running out of the defensive wall to kick a Brazilian free-kick away in Zaire’s final first-round fixture. Unfortunately, the Leopards were thrashed 9-0 by Yugoslavia, having been persuaded at the last moment to attend the encounter, a result that did immense damage to the image of African football.

Following the humiliating defeat at the hands of Yugoslavia, the late Mobutu Sese Seko, Zaire’s leader at the time, intervened directly in the team’s affairs. “After the match, he sent his presidential guards to threaten us,” remembers Ilunga. “They closed the hotel to all journalists and said that if we lost 4-0 to Brazil, none of us would be able to return home.” The unforgivable treatment of Zaire’s players at the World Cup was in stark contrast to the way they had been received following qualification, when Mobutu is said to have gifted each team member a car and a house. “Mobutu’s generals were so jealous of the gifts we were given that he had to buy them a car each, to keep them quiet,” Ilunga said. In their last game, Zaire lost 3-nil to Brazil, which allowed the team to return home free from the fear of retribution, but Africa’s first World Cup showing saw the Leopards record an unenviable statistic of conceding 14 goals without scoring a single one.

Fast forward almost exactly 36 years and 120 minutes, and Africa’s sixth and longest-surviving representative at the 2010 edition of FIFA’s esteemed international tournament are simply a 12-yard spot-kick from reaching the semi-final stage, a watershed moment in the continent’s history. By this point, the global audience had thrown their full support behind Ghana’s ‘Black Stars’ following Luis Suarez’s deplorable goal-line hand-ball, which prevented the West Africans’ justified progression. Their talisman, Asamoah Gyan, who had scored in three of the previous four games, struck the cross-bar with the game’s final kick, and despite redeeming himself by converting in the subsequent penalty-shootout, Ghana were eliminated following a 4-2 reverse.

The country’s desolate onlookers were at least able to assess their players’ performances with a considerable element of pride, despite Ghana just failing to erode the semi-final barrier which no African side has yet been able to. But what are the factors which have contributed to the vastly altered assessment of African national teams? Previously, one or two representatives at international level would be perceived, by the European media at least, as negligible whipping-boys, with less than technically-adept playing staff. This is clearly no longer a widely-held view, evidenced by the number of African players not only competing in Europe at club level, but also at the very highest echelons of European competition.

The succeeding tournament hosted by Korea and Japan was remembered as much for Senegal’s impressive maiden appearance at a World Cup as for Ronaldo’s relentless form, as Frenchman, Bruno Metsu, led the ‘Lions of Teranga’ to the quarter-finals and a heroes welcome in the capital, Dakar, upon their post-elimination arrival. The acceleration of this trend reached a potentially damaging juncture last summer, when five out of Africa’s six attending nations elected foreign supervision prior to the continent’s first hosting of a World Cup in South Africa. Algeria were the only African representative with a home-grown head coach, – Rabah Saadane – but Nigeria’s conduct in releasing manager, Shaibu Amodu, three months before the tournament highlights a much broader concern within African football. “A lot of people [in Africa] still have the mentality that the European knows more,” said Thomas Mlambo, a distinguished television presenter and analyst on the South Africa-based sports network, SuperSport. The fact that Amodu was sacked following not only the remarkable achievement in qualifying Nigeria for the World Cup, but also in leading them to a third placed finish at the African Cup of Nations last year, emphasizes this confusing ‘mentality’ which inspired the Nigerian Football Federation to replace the 52 year-old with Lars Lagerback, who was only available to take the helm having failed to guide Sweden to the finals tournament.

Many will have questioned the decision to remove a coach who had spent two years conditioning the team, and succeeded in meeting his short-term objectives, with a manager who had recently failed to accomplish a similar target and with almost no knowledge of the country’s footballing traditions and philosophy. Amodu was actually sacked in a replica scenario prior to the 2002 World Cup and is unlikely to accept a fifth stint as Nigerian head coach should the opportunity arise. An Ivory Coast fan described the unusual racial barrier most African coaches face, and perhaps goes some way to explaining the seemingly irrational choices many African football federations have made recently: “The players have more respect for whites,” says Bienvenue Kehedi, a 26 year-old student in Abidjan. “An Ivorian can’t assert their will against the players because he tries to keep on the side of all the players and is scared of taking tough decisions.” Although European leadership may have assisted a few African nations in achieving their World Cup aspirations before last summer, the continent’s relatively poor showing at the 2010 tournament was interpreted by many as a sign of African football’s static development based on the dependence on foreign coaches.

The 1995 World, European and African Player of the Year, and Liberian legend, George Weah, has claimed that overseas influences are only serving to harm the progression of the sport in Africa. “In 1999, I addressed international coaches at FIFA and I said it; they come to Africa to coach but they are not the right people for the African team because they are not developing our players, they are just making the money, come for vacation and that’s it,” the former AC Milan forward stated.
Weah implied that the Ivory Coast’s, Cameroon’s, Algeria’s, Nigeria’s and hosts South Africa’s premature elimination should act as a wake-up call to provoke a change to the continent’s process of pursuing European management. “The European coaches are not the best for Africa. Some agree with me, some they don’t. Look at the statistics of the World Cup, since Africa started hiring European coaches, only the Africans coaches have done well,” Weah concluded.

The three-time African Player of the Year (1989, 1994 and 1995) may be right in some respects, but the continual appointment of foreign coaches embodies a natural corollary to African players’ increased presence in the European leagues. The employment of European coaches makes sense considering a large number of modern African national teams consist of mainly European-based players, evinced by a Sven Goran-Eriksson selected Ivory Coast squad containing just one Ivorian-based player out of 23 – the third-choice goalkeeper. There is certainly a growing feeling amongst many Africans that a change in organizational structure at the Confederation of African Football (CAF) is required to assist the development of the presently insufficient, and future, African coaches. With a campaign being led by Weah, arguably the continent’s most recognized footballing and political exemplar, it is not inconceivable to imagine prospective World Cups being contested by African nations guided by African managers. “We have to believe in ourselves, believe in our people. Give them the support to be trained and to develop our teams,” pleads Weah. “The CAF needs to wake-up, we need an institution for coaching in Africa. Our people don’t need to go to Europe, they need to stay in Africa and train.” Weah is certainly fighting a valid cause, because in spite of Africa’s varying successes under foreign managers, it would be catastrophic to witness a repeat of Ghana’s Serbian coach, Milovan Rajevac’s, inexcusable despair following the Black Stars’ 1-0 victory over Serbia in last years’ tournament. Africa’s sudden and meteoric ascension to the top of European football’s consciousness must not halt now, and with a burgeoning pool of talent swarming every region on the continent, it is time for the national federations to cultivate the hidden coaching talent to avoid future disappointment, and maintain the extraordinary progression.

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Stamford Bridge in March last year offered its regular exhibition of Champions’ League knockout football as Chelsea welcomed back Jose Mourinho, who slipped away at the end of an expertly masterminded Inter victory without celebrating, as promised, in view of the fans who once worshipped him and would undoubtedly love the chance to do so again. Despite the customary Mourinho sub-plot escalation, the global audience wasn’t salivating at the Portuguese coach’s wisdom in its entirety, as over 4,000 miles away in East Africa, Kenya’s burgeoning legion of football followers were patiently anticipating a far more poignant appearance.

With five minutes remaining, and a 3-1 Inter lead seemingly enough to send the Italians through to the quarter-finals, Mourinho removed Wesley Sneijder, and replaced the Dutch forward with Nairobi-born Macdonald Mariga, the first Kenyan representative in the history of the Champions’ League. Mariga’s story isn’t all together unfamiliar, although it has been revealed this year that the midfielder earns $1.3million a year, the most of any East African player by a distance. But what encouraged Mariga’s journey from his agricultural background in Nakuru, playing in front of a diminutive crowd for Kenya’s national military team, to securing the attention of hundreds of millions of spectators from all corners of the globe, not to mention sharing occupational residency with Samuel Eto’o and Didier Drogba?

The aforementioned experienced contrasting emotions that night not least due to the result, but also since Drogba was dismissed for an unnecessary assault on Thiago Motta following Eto’o’s match-winner. Nevertheless, both had already cemented their statuses in their home continent as both athletic and political icons long before Mariga confirmed his place amongst his country’s most admired sporting paladins. The strikers are hailed as much for their charitable endowments as for their celebrity, with Drogba immortalized in the Ivory Coast for effectively ending five years of civil war, but how did either achieve such influential prominence having emerged from the humblest of beginnings? Youth academies have naturally played a significant role in exporting the continent’s precocious talents for the opportunities of greater exposure playing in Europe’s wealthier leagues, but their structure and organization is far more complex than the development facilities Premier League fans are used to. On the surface, this process appears to assist young Africans in the pursuit of their footballing ambitions, but the reality is far more brutal, and the coordination of several academies is only serving to harm the future of football in Africa.

Since the turn of the millennium, European fans, and particularly those who follow Premier League clubs, have witnessed a sudden infiltration of Ivorian talent, principally attributed to the MimoSifcom Academy near the country’s largest city, Abidjan. MimoSifcom is the official development facility of ASEC Mimosas, perhaps the Ivory Coast’s most famous footballing institution, and represents one of the few academies which demonstrate an authentically-African philosophy. The academy was one of the first structures of its kind in sub-Saharan Africa when founded in 1994, and its extant values mirror those of its European counterparts in that MimoSifcom provide hopeful thirteen to 17 year-olds with an academic as well as footballing education. The idea, as with any academy of this nature, is to promote promising candidates in to the Mimosas first-team, but with the mid-term intention to export the most gifted individuals to Europe in order to recover the costs of training young players and to sustain a steady flow of replacements for the successful graduates.

Continued on Page TWO

It’s not uncommon in modern day football for players to be eligible to represent multiple different Nations. As the rules dictate a player can play for a different country provided they have not played a full competitive international. Games for international youth teams or friendly appearances would have no impact on future eligibility for a different Nation. However, once a player has made a full competitive appearance for one country, the player would not then be able to play for a different country.

An example of such a case is newly capped England player Danny Welbeck. Welbeck won his first England cap in the recent friendly against Ghana – but he is also eligible to play for Ghana. However the Manchester United player has confirmed he will now commit to England.

Welbeck said “I got misquoted on one of the questions. My future looks like it’s with England, definitely. I’ve been in Manchester all my life and I’m a Manc through and through. I’ve played for England at all the youth levels up to the Under 21s and it just felt like progression to graduate to the seniors and, the other day, it happened as well.”

It does open up an interesting discussion on whether players should be able to play for a different country after not breaking into the full England team?

I think it’s fairly clear that if a player can play for a different country they should be encouraged to do so. However, if a player has already represented England at various youth levels, should they then be able to switch to a different country?

In my opinion, yes they should be able to. I just feel that if a player has a chance at an international career they shouldn’t be prevented from doing so just because he played for England at various youth levels.

However, are the current rules fair and should players have to pick a Nation before being able to make an appearance at various youth levels? Of course it’s difficult when the player is very young and at which stage should a player have to decide?

In many ways this shows that the current system is indeed right. The only slightly gray area is U21 level, because this is the natural progression to senior level and you would like to know these players are going be available. However, if a player isn’t going to be good enough to play for England it’s good to know they still have a shot at an International career.

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1. Better Do Bet..err  -

These days they’re more contentious than military intervention or a Daily Mail editorial on…anything, or the American pronunciation of Craig (it’s Cray-g, not Kreg for goodness sake!) So what better way to while away the hour (and a half) of a game you’re struggling to get your juices flowing for, than a flutter? Betting makes football more fun apparently. Or so my dad, and Ray Winstone, always says. And he spends his Friday nights watching Dagenham and Swindon battle it out to see who can hit low flying aircraft first. My dad that is, not Ray Winstone.

At 9-1 for first goal scorer, Ashley Young looked a diamond. Quid’s in my son. Bangerang. The lad had looked excellent against the Welsh, and with his natural habit of drifting into the box from the wing (like a sort of opposite world anti-Rooney) and his penalty taking prowess for Villa, nines looked a steal. Fives for Andy Carroll? Not worth it, not when there were nines available for Young and a sweet ton to be made from light £12 bet.

There is however, a caveat (Stan Collymore’s favourite word) for football betting in my opinion. Never bet on a game you’ve already got a vested interest in, it tends to distract you. And so it was that I spent the entire first half forgoing any real allegiance to my country of birth (like a sort of opposite world anti-Welbeck) and focused the entirety of my attention on supporting Ashley Young.  Any player who didn’t pass it to Young whenever he was in a passably decent position was an absolute bastard, as was Andy Carroll, merely for the heinous crime of being in positions that Ashley Young should’ve been in, and having the audacity to expect players to look for him from crosses. And after half an hour, as the ball crashed off the bar from a mere yard out, the goalkeeper nowhere to be seen and my golden boy prone on the turf in disbelief at his stunning, gaping, awful awful miss, I consoled my inner England fan that I was at least, most probably, more upset about it than anyone else in the stadium. And then we scored, through Andy (bastard) Carroll, and I rose to my feet in dampened polite applause at a cracking first senior goal for an exciting new young prospect in a surprisingly entertaining and atmospheric International at Wembley, with only one thought trawling through my mind. “I hate you Ashley Young.”

2. Let The Right Ones In – Aside from its ability to make me hate my own National Team’s players (a stance usually only adopted during abject tournament performances, or as they’re more commonly know, tournament performances) this caveat (I’ve now used it almost as much in one article as Collymore attempts to in a sentence) was relevant because last night’s game – contrary to all expectations – was really good. Watching a young, unconventional, inexperienced England side pass the ball along the ground and create chances against a side whose default setting is “run at them really fast” would’ve been a pleasure (relative to almost all other new Wembley Internationals) if I hadn’t been steadfastly supporting one rather disappointing player. And in hindsight (and truth) I did actually enjoy it. I also – to even greater surprise – found myself agreeing wholeheartedly with Stan Collymore’s TalkSport rantings (without any caveats) that these kind of experimental games are vitally important for building up both a new generation of competent performers and a reliable cast of backup players. In his own mangled hyper-active words “you can’t dump someone into a new job and expect them to carry out all the difficult tasks on their first day”, they need bedding in for confidence and players like Wilshere or Baines (who where both excellent) will now be one feathery cap closer to feeling at home in an England shirt.

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