The decision about who will host the 2018 World Cup is now just 10 days away and to celebrate England’s successful bid (hopefully!) here at FootballFanCast.com we will run down England’s all-time Top Ten World Cup stars in the run-up to FIFA’s decision.
England have had plenty of World Cup heroes over the years, sadly few from the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, and if the Three Lions are successful in their bid then maybe the heroics of 1966 can be replicated at Wembley in 2018. We start at number 10 with a true England great who has his name firmly etched in the record books and make sure you join him in backing the bid!
Click on the Back the Bid poster below to see who’s at #10
No one can disagree that this is turning out to be a great season for Sheffield Wednesday.
With us now sitting pretty in second spot ahead of the final game of the season at home to already relegated Wycombe I think that promotion could well be on the cards although it is not time to get out the champagne just yet but we can look at the top performers for the club during this fantastic season.
During the course of the season every man has been outstanding in their own way this season but one player who has been consistent week in week out is Portuguese midfielder José Semedo. Brought in from Charlton in the summer he made an immediate impact on the pitch showing his combative determination right from the first whistle up until this point in the season with his work ethic being second to none.. Not a goal scorer but has a goal to his name and helped the team with a few assists including the cross for Gary Madine’s equaliser against United in October. Playing every single league game this season in the heart of midfield every Wednesday fan knows him for crunching tackles quickly earning him the song ‘You’ll never get past Semedo!’
Another impressive player for me this year although not our man is central defender loanee Danny Batth. Because of his age I have given him my accolade of Young Player of the Season which in my eyes he thoroughly deserves. Playing at the back with different men through the course of the season forming a strong partnership with whoever is beside him showing his strength, ball control and awareness. A young man with a very bright future ahead of him plays as if he has played for many more years than he actually has. A permanent transfer to the club for Batth in the summer would be a fantastic addition for next seasons hopeful Championship campaign but if not we wish him the best of luck at a very lucky Wolves.
When he signed from Plymouth in mid-January last year everybody recognised we signed a very strong centre back in Réda Johnson. He seemed an ideal buy as a very competent centre half until converting into a left back for cover. Before too long manager at the time Gary Megson and the whole of Sheffield Wednesday realised he was also very capable in this position. Now running down the left channel he always looks a threat going towards goal which has seen him pitch in with seven goals along the way. This great form has even seen him earn more recognition after being called up for Benin.
When Julian Bennett was signed at the start of the season from Nottingham Forest thoughts were we had signed a high profile left back and during his first few appearances he looked a promising; dynamic defender who was able to attack. He possesses a long throw and pace but always seemed shy to cross the ball into the box. He looked a great signing but after a few weeks was ruled out with injury and Réda was there to fill the gap and Bennett was then unable to break back into the first team and when now put in the team to cover Johnson, he seems out of place trying to impress the manager too much. Once he returns to full fitness I can see him claiming his place back in the side, hopefully in the Championship.
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The United States opened their CONCACAF Gold Cup campaign with a 2-0 victory over Canada on Tuesday, while Panama held off Guadeloupe.Villarreal striker Jozy Altidore, who spent the second half of the 2010-11 season on loan to Turkish club Bursaspor, opened the scoring 14 minutes into the match at Ford Field, Detroit.
Fulham’s Clint Dempsey doubled the US lead just after the hour mark.
And it would have been 3-0 to the home side, but for a missed penalty from San Jose’s Chris Wondolowski four minutes from time.
The win sees the US lead Group C on goal difference from Panama, who held off a Guadeloupe revival to win 3-2 earlier at Ford Field.
Two goals in the space of three minutes, the first from Club Leon striker Blas Perez and the second courtesy of Juan Aurich forward Luis Tejada, gave Panama a 2-0 lead just 31 minutes into the match.
Guadeloupe’s position worsened when they lost defender Mickael Tacalfred to a red card in the 37th minute.
Panama went 3-0 ahead courtesy of a penalty from defender Gabriel Gomez on 56 minutes.
But Guadeloupe’s 10 men almost managed an unlikely comeback, as a brace from Le Havre striker Brice Jovial saw the team from the Caribbean island threaten to restore parity.
But Panama held on to record the win to sit equal with the US on three points.
Everyone will have their own view on the Rooney shenanigans of the last week – some will say he was an idiot for questioning his manager, some will say his performances do not merit an improved contract, some will say he has the right to question the club’s ambitions, some will blame his agent.
Either way, I don’t really care. What I do care about is how yet again a footballer has been blamed for all the world’s evils. Well it’s certainly annoyed me a bit anyway.
I was reading the Daily Mail at the weekend (I want to make it absolutely clear I was in a sandwich shop at the time, and fancied a laugh). Rooney’s new contract was the headline story – under the premise of his unbelievable greed.
As the rest of the nation faces job threats and austerity over the next five years, Wayne Rooney can afford that self-satisfied smirk.
They questioned how he could earn £250,000 a week just for kicking a football.
Yeah, cos that’s all he does isn’t it? Just kicks a pig’s bladder around for 90 minutes a week – I mean, I could do that, for a lot less money.
But it was the last paragraph of the headline story that had me slumped on the shop counter in despair. It quoted a nurse bemoaning cuts at her nursing home, saying how disgusting it was that he could get so much money when people are losing their jobs.
Shame on you Wayne.
Football has long been blamed for much of the world’s ills, usually by people who don’t like football – overpaid prima donnas, bad role models, ill-disciplined, ill-educated, run by idiots. Nothing has changed there.
But just what level of stupidity leads you to believe that Wayne Rooney is somehow responsible in any shape or form for the state of the NHS, or our recession? Would that nurse have felt better if Rooney had taken a massive pay cut? Would that have helped keep more of her colleagues in jobs?
No, of course it wouldn’t, but let’s blame him anyway.
Continued on Page TWO
The ironic thing is that the only link Rooney has to government policy, jobs and the recession is the wage he gets. And the best thing for those nurses is for him to get paid as much as possible – the more he gets, the more tax he pays, the more money the government has. They should be thanking him.
You can blame footballers as a whole if you wish for the financial troubles many clubs are facing, but at the end of the day, those clubs chased impossible dreams, spent beyond their means, and no-one forced them to pay these figures. And even if you feel players should be blamed, you can’t lump all the guilt on one player, and for all the acquired debt that the Glazers have introduced to Manchester United, no single pay rise is going to trouble Rooney’s club. This was a contract negotiation between an employee and his employer, simple as that. A very public one, admittedly, but a contract negotiation nevertheless. However ill-deserved it was, the club agreed to it, and can afford it. Rooney, like everyone else, is simply demanding the best payment he can get for his services. If United didn’t like it, they can always get rid of him.
Are movie stars earning £20m a film ever called greedy? Pop stars, Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, JK Rowling or Richard Branson? What’s their responsibility to our faltering economy? I mean, all Formula 1 drivers do is drive a car round a track every couple of weeks!
Of course it was widely reported that Rooney’s deal was worth £250,000 a week, the media using that well known trick of adding on every bonus imaginable to make him look even greedier, knowing full well that to earn that he would have to score a hat trick every match, lead United to the treble every season for five years, and find a cure for cancer. This is how Yaya Toure is on £230,000 a week and Carlos Tevez cost City about £97m. And all the while there’s people in Doncaster that can’t even afford their next packet of fags. It makes me sick.
Miranda Sawyer wrote in The Mirror in an appalling little piece about how she imagines Rooney to be like a spoilt little child, commenting on how he is spiffing away money (what?) whilst United fans face up to recession. Yawn.
One United fan slated him for jetting off on holiday when his club needed him. Need him for what? He’s injured, but then again maybe he wanted him serving behind the bar on match days.
The world is a strange place when I turn to Tony Cascarino for some sage advice, but about the only sensible thing he has ever said was in an article five years ago.
“For all the improvements to stadiums and the great popularity that the sport enjoys now, the majority of players are still poorly educated working-class guys. They’re not, for the most part, paragons of virtue. If society wants to hold them up as role models, that’s society’s choice, not football’s. The last time I checked, I was responsible for bringing up my children properly, not Wayne Rooney or El-Hadji Diouf.”
Of course, there’s no need for abusing referees all game, something kids may well copy – on the pitch players have a responsibility, as kids will mimic what they see footballers do when they themselves kick a ball around. But off the pitch I don’t see them as something to aspire to at all, and a section of them will inevitably misbehave as they always have done, and as many of the rest of society do – they are human beings.
Concluded on Page THREE
But back to society in general, This myopic view of the world and how football should take some blame first came to my attention when Manchester City were kindly taken over two years ago by some very wealthy men with whom you will now be familiar, and Mark Lawrenson questioned how City could be throwing obscene amounts of money in trying to sign Kaka when hospitals were closing down around the country and people were living in abject poverty in their millions.
“At a time when people have been left devastated by the credit crunch, football is in danger of shooting itself in the foot. It would be bad enough during a boom time, but during these tough economic times it is sick. If City do this then they will lose the sympathy and support of fans who will begin to question the morality of how someone can spend that sort of money on a player rather than build a new hospital or pay for some lifesaving medical care. People will turn round and say: ‘The world has gone mad. I’m not sure about football any more’. How would you feel if you can’t pay the bills while a player at your club is on mind-boggling money?”
It’s hard to put into words how stupid this comment was, but I’m going to try anyway.
Imagine if you will the time I was packed and ready to go on my holiday. Waiting for the taxi to arrive at my parents’ house (both at work, in the days before mobile phones), I popped out to the newsagents for some crisps, and came back to discover my house keys were packed in the suitcase. After crying for a bit, I tried to kick the front door down, failed, but set off the burglar alarm, alerting a few of my neighbours. I tried to climb in an open window on the first floor, but fell off the porch, injuring my ankle. In the end I was forced to break a window, which had the knock-on effect of spraying the cat with glass. I left a note for my mum apologising, and off on holiday I went.
Anyway, it’s about that level of stupid.
Steve Coppell too said it was completely wrong when people were losing jobs in credit crunch times for City to be spending so much money. Apparently football clubs can only spend money during times of economic boom. And it seems players can only get pay rises too if unemployment levels are low enough.
PFA chief executive Gordon Taylor then told the world of his disapproval of City’s reported £100million bid for Kaka.
“It is a bit bizarre that, in these times of credit crunch, we are talking about a club paying £100m for one player,” he said.
“One of the things we have to ask is…is football sending out the right signals given the current financial climate? Football needs to set a good example to the rest of the world, as we do with our anti-racism programmes and community projects. Football cannot be immune from the credit crunch and whilst City are an exception to the rule, the game has a duty to show financial propriety at this moment in time.”
Gordon Taylor is the highest paid union official in the world. Taylor earns a £1million yearly salary – five times the remuneration of the second highest-paid union official and around ten times that of the average League Two player. For this money, his jobs seems to consist of blindly defending the rape allegations, prison sentences, two-footed tackles and roasting sessions that his members seemed so keen to enjoy (thanks to football365.com for that quote).
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It’s this obsession with “making a gesture”. Sadly, these gestures don’t actually achieve anything. If Rooney had for some reason agreed to play for free, not one person in this country would have benefited as a result. A few Americans maybe, but none of us, no one on the breadline, no one out of a job, no one looking for football to make some gesture that will make them feel better for ten minutes before the reality once more hit home.
Put simply, some footballers earn a lot of money because they generate a lot of money. Supply and demand. Wayne Rooney is worth every penny to Manchester United plc, even when his form dips.
I am a Manchester City fan. I have no particular warmth towards Wayne Rooney, or most footballers to be honest, (him more than most). There is a lot to dislike about Rooney – he is not someone I would aspire to be, or want kids to look up to. But let’s focus the blame for society’s ills where they are deserved, and for once give football a break.
Written By Howard Hockin
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Manchester City boss Roberto Mancini was present at Lille’s 4-0 win over Valenciennes at the weekend, and it is believed that the Etihad Stadium outfit are ready to enter the race to sign Eden Hazard.
The Belgian playmaker, who scored one and set up two more in the Ligue 1 fixture, has countless suitors around Europe, including Manchester United, Tottenham and Arsenal.
However, The Sun state that big-spending City are ready to launch a move for the attacking midfielder, who has admitted he is likely to leave France in the summer and has a £33million release clause in his contract.
Hazard stated that he knew Mancini was in the crowd, but was focussed on winning the match for Lille.
“I heard before the game that Mancini was there,” he confessed.
“For my part I always try and play the same way, whether Alex Ferguson’s there or Mancini now.
“I try and forget about that when I’m on the pitch, I try to play my own game. No matter who’s in the stands I just try to show what I can do.
“We’ll see what happens, but for now I’m concentrating on finishing the season well with Lille,” he concluded.
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All eyes are on Wembley tonight as both Manchester United and Barcelona seek their 4th European Cup success. Sir Alex Ferguson believes that the game could be the best Champions League final in years as the two most successful sides in Europe in the past 10 years face off for what is arguably the biggest competition in domestic football.
In the papers this morning there have been a mixed bag of stories that include FIFA opening an ethics case against Blatter; Sam Allardyce set to move in at West Ham, while Gareth Bale has called upon Tottenham to do everything to keep Redknapp at White Hart Lane.
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Fifa opens ethics case against Blatter – Guardian
Hiddink expecting the call from Chelsea – Daily Telegraph
Ferguson: United are playing Barça for pride not revenge – Guardian
Harry has to stay! Bale predicts dark future for Spurs if Redknapp moves on – Daily Mail
Platini may step up if Fifa charges stick – Daily Telegraph
Reo-Coker among 10 Villa departures – Guardian
It’s West Sam United – Sun
Liverpool flop Acquilani’s dream move to Juventus looks in doubt – Daily Mail
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Karim: I’m Gunner stay at Madrid – Sun
Newcastle trying to beat Sunderland to Hammers star – Mirror
Chicharito almost quit football after just one goal in two years – Mirror
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Imogen Thomas Joins Paddy Power For a Champion Offer! They will refund losing Champions League Final bets if Man United lose the match Make your bets now!
The Merseyside derby has always been hotly contested despite protestations to the contrary from those who instead name it the friendly derby. However, since the inception of the Premier League the game has had more red cards than and any other. As a neutral, I always look forward to this explosive fixture and Sunday will almost certainly be no different given Liverpool’s desperation to share the spoils. It is the longest currently running top-flight derby in England, having been played at that level since 1962 when Liverpool were promoted to the First Division so naturally there have been some classics. Here are my top five:
1) Everton 2-3 Liverpool (Premier League, April 2001)
If you look back 9 years to this fixture, you will be reflecting on one of the most pulsating and tempestuous Merseyside derbies of all time. Liverpool were seeking to close a nine-point gap on third place whilst the Toffees were desperate for three points in order to combat the threat of a relegation battle. It saw 12 yellow cards, two penalties, a red card and five goals in total. Emile Heskey opened the scoring for Liverpool after just four minutes in wake of a claim for handball from Jamie Carragher, who then played it Dietmar Hamman. The German slid a clever pass into Big Emile who shrugged off Steve Watson to crash the ball past Paul Gerrard. Everton’s equaliser came on 42 minutes when Michael Ball crossed into the opposition penalty area and Kevin Campbell gave chase only to be tackled by Carragher. In Carragher’s attempt to prod the ball away from Campbell, he inadvertently prodded it to Everton’s big number nine, Duncan Ferguson for 1-1.
After the break Liverpool hit an Everton side that were dominating proceedings on the counter attack. As Robbie Fowler attempted pick out Smicer, the ball found its way, via a deflection to Markus Babbel who slotted it home. 2-1. Liverpool’s Robbie Fowler then missed a penalty before Everton won one of their own – Jeff Winter pointing to the spot following a lunge on David Unsworth from the already booked Igor Biscan and as Biscan went to run an early bath, Unsworth dusted himself down and smashed it Sander Westerveld. In an already frenetic game, there was to be a final twist. In stoppage time, Niclas Alexandersson fouled Gregory Vignal over 40 yards from goal and Gary McAllister curled the ball majestically past Paul Gerrard to win it for the red half of Liverpool.
2) Everton 4-4 Liverpool (aet, FA Cup 5th Round replay, 1991)
It was a crazy game which produced one of the most exhilarating FA Cup games of all time. Peter Beardsley put Liverpool 1-0 up with a simple half-volley from close range and the men in red looked comfortable until Everton hero Graeme Sharp met Andy Hinchcliffe’s cross at the far post and headed them level. It was Beardsley again to make it 2-1, shimmying his way past Martin Keown and placing his left foot shot past Neville Southall. It was beginning to heat up and Sharp levelled in the 73 minute after an infamous mix up between Grobelaar and defender Nicol to make it 2-2. Everton needed to rescue it in the final minutes after Ian Rush’s goal and Tony Cottee was the man to do so and take it into extra time. In extra time, you’d have thought for all the world Barnes had sealed a famous victory with his curled effort for 4-3 but Cottee nabbed another leveller in minute 114th of this classic. Dalglish bizarrely resigned following the game.
3) Everton 3-0 Liverpool (Premier League, September 2006)
Everton continued their great start to the season with this victory over their Merseyside rivals with Andrew Johnson scoring twice. They showed a ruthless streak in front of goal and stood firm in the face of a Liverpool revival to record the biggest derby win in 42 years. Toffees fans who look back fondly at that day, will have Pepe Reina’s fumble of Lee Carsley’s shot for Andrew Johnson to nod home at the forefront of their minds.
4) Everton 1-0 Liverpool (FA Cup 2009)
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Teenager Dan Gosling fired home the winner in this one with two minutes of extra time remaining to gift Everton bragging rights in this fourth round replay curling home a measured finish past Pepe Reina sparking wild celebrations from the Evertonians in Goodison Park.
5) Liverpool 3-1 Everton (FA Cup Final, May 1986)
Seven days after Liverpool had secured the title, with Everton coming second, the two met at Wembley for this historic FA Cup Final. Everton were appearing in their third successive final whilst Liverpool were bidding to be the third team in the 20th century to do the double. Gary Lineker latched onto Peter Reid’s 40 yard ball to open the scoring for Everton in the 27th minute. But Ian Rush equalised in the 56th minute and then five minutes later Johnston stabbed home for 2-1. There enough time for Rush to complete a brace with another goal late on linking up with Jan Molby. Bobby Mimms thwarted the Welshman in getting his hat-trick.
Liverpool manager has stated that he is happy to have Luis Suarez back in contention for the game against Tottenham on Monday night, and is relishing the opportunity to partner the South American with Steven Gerrard and Andy Carroll.
The Uruguay international will return to the Premier League fray against Harry Redknapp’s men, after serving an eight-match ban for racially abusing Patrice Evra in a clash against Manchester United.
Dalglish is glad to have his first-choice attacking trident available, and feels the trio can aid the Merseysiders’ continued progression.
“I’ve been told the three of them have only played 60 minutes together,” he said at a pre-match press conference, covered by Sky Sports.
“For various reasons I don’t think they’ve had a great deal of time to play together on the pitch, but the West Brom game away in October comes to mind that Luis and Andy did well.
“Luis played Andy in for a goal that day and so we hope to see more of them together. I am happy we’ve got all the strikers fit and available at the moment. Within the team partnerships will develop,” he stated.
The Scottish coach went on to hail the improvement within the club over the last 12 months, as The Reds look to qualify for the Champions League for the first time since they finished second in 2008-09.
“We’re excited with what’s happening here lately and I think everybody can say they have moved the club on a little bit,” the trainer continued.
“We’ve made good progress. And I don’t think we need to look so much at the results against the two Manchester clubs to justify it.
“There was progress all along. The squad’s much stronger now than it was last year – which is progress.
“We can’t look back on ifs, buts and maybes in terms of dropped points at home, but we’ve still a lot of football to play,” he admitted.
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With Arsenal and Newcastle both winning over the weekend, the emphasis is on the Anfield team to match their rivals’ results to keep up to speed in the battle for fourth.
It could be assumed, that the majority of those living outside of central Africa would name Muhammad Ali and George Foreman’s heavyweight title fight as the most significant sports news to emanate from Zaire in 1974. The now legendary bout, mostly referred to as the ‘Rumble in the Jungle,’ was held in Kinshasa in October of that year, resulting in Ali’s reinstatement as world champion following an eighth round knockout.
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.
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It is worth mentioning that Africa’s footballing development coincided with the continent’s increased representation at World Cups. It wasn’t until the 1998 tournament in France, when the competitions’ format was adjusted to include eight more nations totaling 32 teams, that Africa was granted as many as five positions in the group phase. Of those five, only Nigeria progressed to the knockout stages where they were emphatically beaten 4-1 by Denmark, but one particular feature of the ‘Super Eagles’’ composition may explain the relative success enjoyed by several African countries since the 1998 World Cup. Although FIFA’s casual regulations pertaining to nationality requirements in international football allowed nine countries to benefit from foreign management in 1998, Nigeria’s performance under the stewardship of Serbian coach, Bora Milutinovic, encouraged future African World Cup contestants to acquire overseas direction.
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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Bolton Wanderers manager Owen Coyle has admitted that he will soon start contract talks with in-form striker Johan Elmander.
After making the move to the Reebok Stadium from French side Toulouse in a club-record transfer deal in 2008, the Swede struggled to make an impact under former boss Gary Megson.
But after notching four times in seven outings this term, Coyle believes he is seeing the best in Elmander alongside recent England debutant Kevin Davies.
"I have had a chat with the chairman and the owner as you do and, when the time is right, which shouldn't be too far away, I'm pretty sure we'll get round to trying to sort something out on that," Coyle said.
"Johan knows that he has a manager that believes in him and wants him at the football club.
"He is playing ever so well, he is showing what a good player he is and he looks like he is enjoying his football, which is important for him. Long may that continue.
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"I believe I have a quality striker on my hands in Johan Elmander and it is for me as a manager to try and nurture that and bring the best out of him."Subscribe to Football FanCast News Headlines by Email