African team ever winning the Football World Cup:Just an overoptimism

The undisputed king of football,Pele once tipped an African nation to win the World Cup by the end of the 20th century.Years have gone by and the best African teams have ever done in World Cup is to reach the quarter finals.2014 World cup qualifiers again saw the same five African teams qualifying for Brazil as for South Africa, 2010.The Ivory Coast are perhaps deemed the strongest African nation, with a strong contingent playing at a high level in Europe (the only two players in the squad to play domestically are reserve goalkeepers) and a continent-leading FIFA Ranking of 17th. Ghana—who have no homegrown players in their strong squad—are also worthy contenders, perhaps based on their impressive quarterfinal appearance in the last tournament.Recently,Roy Hodgson,English team manager claimed an African team might have a better chance of winning the World Cup in Brazil next summer than a European one on account of suitable climate and humidity factors.But the big question is whether a factor like climate can really change the shape of game in favor of africans.Because going by that argument,South Americans are the favorites as nobody knows the climate better than them.

World cup has been traditionally dominated by European and South American sides and african teams have never managed to defy this argument. Last world cup was no exception where only Ghana managed to put up some fight and reached the quarter-finals, to equal Africa’s earlier best ever World Cup performance by Cameroon in 1990 and Senegal in 2002.Last world cup saw six of the continent’s best teams qualifying but except Ghana, all four-Nigeria, Cameroon, Algeria, and the Ivory Coast failed to reach the last 16 and host South Africa failed even to pass through the group stage .Cameroon posted their poorest World Cup run in South Africa, where they lost all three games to finish bottom of a group that had the Netherlands, Japan and Denmark.Algeria, World Cup finalists in 1982, 1986 and 2010, lost two games and held England to a draw, but failed to score a goal.

Quite evident from the current state of affairs of african football,it has failed to progress over the last 10 years or so and still has a long way to go.Though African nations are now more competitive and boast a greater breadth of talent,they still lack discipline and creativity needed to outplay the tough opponents.Talking about individual teams,Nigeria is one team which has enough fire power to go past quarterfinals,but still their biggest undoing remains getting different individual talents to play as a unit.Besides this, their defence looks very vulnerable and rumors like return of experienced skipper Joseph Yobo, who has been frozen out since the nations cup will really aggravate the situation.Ivory Coast is no exception to that.The Ivorians boast a top-class midfield and attack, but will again struggle to keep out the goals as their defence led by Liverpool ace Kolo Toure has continued to struggle.No-one could doubt the talent is there.Players like Didier Drogba and Yaya Toure have shown in past what they are capable of to do. But the performances have come into international tournaments in the last decade and haven’t yet delivered upto their talent quotient. And are they really as good now as they were when Drogba was at his peak?This has not gone unnoticed by the bookies and despite all the talks of amazing african team performances,according to oddschecker.com, Ivory Coast are the 20th favorite to win, with odds of around 200/1. Ghana are 18th, with odds of 125/1.

Nobody knows when an African team will manage to register a world cup title victory and shine at the peak of world football.But yes,the day is not too far away and even 2014 can see some miracles.As of now they seem to be fine contenders, but terming them probable winners would be an overstatement.