Football on the African continent will always be the number one sport. Just look at the incredible levels of excitement when countries play their Africa or World Cup qualifying matches. The return of the continent's top players from their bases all across the world is a sure sign for millions of football's followers to come out and fanatically root for their countries.
The same cannot be said for the domestic league's around the continent, with a only handful of team's able to fill their grounds when they take to the field for the matches that are the bread and butter of local football.
Since African players began to catch the eye of league's beyond the continent's shores, there has been a steady departure of talent, firstly beginning with the more established stars, but latterly including players who show the first sign of potential, even barely out of their teens. This player-drain has depleted African football of its best talents.
This, alongside several other factors, among them the advent of satellite television that beams the best football from around the world directly into our living rooms, means that local football has become the second or even third choice option for African football followers.
Couple this with dilapidated infrastructure, poor ablution facilities, violence, drug use (marijuana smoking in the stands) and one begins to understand why domestic football’s following has been in decline across Africa for over two decades.
With north African football in turmoil after the political uprising there in the last two years, west African football ravaged by match rigging, poor refereeing, southern and east African football not competitive, the local game looks doomed to go through many more years of stagnation.
The once popular African Champions League has lost its appeal and is of interest only to the supporters of the teams that play in it while the rest of Africa pays no attention. Even Africa's flagship tournament, the Africa Cup of Nations, has seen poor crowds at the the last three tournaments, the only exception being the home teams matches and the final itself, as the continent's top players go through the motions looking as if they would rather be somewhere else.
With African football's leadership focused mainly around the national team and its lucrative trips through which they generate thousands of dollars in allowances and upkeep money, it is no surprise that the less lucrative parts of the game are ignored. Football development, despite its importance in sustaining the game, is disregarded or ignored simply because there is little money to be made from it. True, there has been some progress commercially for African football, but again most of the sponsorship money has been channelled to the upper reaches of the game. The true state of African football can only be truly measured when taken in comparision with the rest of the world. There is no better barometre than the FIFA World Cup. To date no African team has progressed beyond the quarter final. At the last World Cup the best African performance came from Ghana who were the only African team to get beyond the group stage. Only by fixing the domestic game can the national teams perform better. African football needs to be better run commercially to enable players to stay a home longer so that bigger crowds are attracted, domestic televised football becomes more attractive and sponsors then open up their pockets for a product that is more appealing to the audiences they are constantly seeking.
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