Are African footballers underrated?

It seems like no national or international footballing body is doing more to tackle racism than the Football Association (FA). And yet it’s not enough. Football is alienating people from all walks of life through a number of issues, but it is also losing traditional supporters for the same reasons.
In a recent event we saw that Manchester City midfielder Yaya Toure feels he does not get the respect he deserves because he is from Africa. It makes everyone put on their thinking hats as to what forced such a great player to give a statement like this one. Yaya Toure is an Ivory Coast international has won league titles in England, Spain and Greece as well as his homeland, is a key figure in City’s push for more silverware and is on the six-man shortlist for the Professional Footballers’ Association’s player of the season award. In spite of all these achievements, still Yaya Toure becomes a victim because of being underrated.
This act of underrating is not only felt by the African footballers but the non-african footballers are also becoming sensitive to this issue as they believe talent should be given recognition irrespective of the Country, race, religion from which it may belong. This can be seen by Sameer Nasri’s statement where he feels bad about lack of recognition given to Yaya Toure. Nasri claimed that “only his (Yaya’s) birthplace has blocked him from being hailed as one of the best midfielders in the world.”
According to most of the African footballers proper recognition has only come from the fans. They feel that the other coaches, colleagues etc. still hesitate to praise them or appreciate their work for unknown reasons which has caused them to feel demotivated about their games. Still there are some African players who have literally broken these barriers. Players like Didier Drogba and Cameroon striker Samuel Eto’o have also reached the top level of European football inspite of being African and have continued to dominate with their game. Those players are really more than legends. However, the problem is, in spite of their mind blowing achievements, they are miserly praised & the newbies from other parts of the world are given the same praise as felt by most African players.
It seems there still is a long way to go for the football world to come up with this mindset. People should change the angle of looking towards things and try to measure each individual with the same scale rather than different scales for different individuals which might cause problems not only with them but on a bigger scale. Talent needs to be appreciated and rewarded open heartedly to make things smooth in the world of football.
It looks like things are changing and will surely change in the future. We hope that this beautiful game of football will remain unbiased towards everyone.