African football teams play well for little rewards and FIFA meddles with our game

So, many more games and many more African defeats. I have to say, one of the features of this world cup has been of African teams playing extremely well yet still not managing to win. They play football with the right attitude by passing the ball quickly and to feet and with swift counter attacks. Their only problem being that these counter attacks are far from decisive. It does seem to be a feature of their play that they find themselves in excellent positions to shoot or cross and do neither. They seem to lose there concentration in those vital moments that make or break a game. Of course, this can only be put down to lack of experience at the highest level but you have to wonder if African teams will ever get this experience under the corrupt footballing bodies in their home states. These bodies ruin the fantastic talents that their players have and mean that no European clubs are willing to get involved in scouting in Africa becasue of the political minefield that it is. Pele once predicted that by 2002 an African team would have one the World Cup. You can see why this is true, the players are all extremely fit, powerful and skilful but until they can test themselves at the highest level, they will never win the Cup, which is a crying shame when you consider the next world cup is in 2010 in South Africa, lets hope they can get it together by then.
One of the African teams that does have players that have played at the highest level is the Ivory Coast. They play glorious attacking football and I expect some of their "un heard" of players to move on to bigger and better things just like Eboue, Toure and Drogba have done. Infact it is Toure's younger brother, Yaya, that really caught my eye. He plays some outstanding through balls and long passes but is also able to keep the pace of the game moving along, something like a cross between Beckham and Lampard. It is a cruel twist of fate that they are in the a group containing Holland, Argentina and Serbia and Monetenegro because I feel any of those teams could have gone on to the later stages of the tournament and really done well. I think FIFA need to really think about how they draw the groups next time as having a group such as that is damaging to the Cup.

In my next blog I'm going to follow up my last point with my opinions on what FIFA has told the referees to do. IM also going to looks at the pundits that have really impressed me and those that haven't really been up to scratch. I'll also obviously be looking at Brazil and England and identifying the teams that are threats to us. So keep reading.

Steve