Into The Dark Continent

It is difficult after watching Stephane Baga (Chonburi FC) blast two outstanding goals past the Melbourne Victory defenders to understand why the A-league still hasn’t tapped into this brimming pool of football talent.

Africa players should be in a lot of ways much more appealing than South America imports. Certainly the EPL seems to be embracing the African footballer and it has been shown that in a lot of ways the physique of the African player is better suited to the fast and physical EPL than that of their South American counterparts. The same could be true of our A-League.

As Les Murray quite rightly pointed out in this article last year, African talent comes cheap and they are of a technical standard that should make them attractive imports.

In the article Les mentions Qatar’s direct recruitment of African teenagers with the express intention of nationalizing them to play for Qatar. I came across this excellent article detailing what Qatar is doing as a country in this area from the Albuquerque Tribune. The scope of their recruitment is staggering.

When Ernie Merrick and Gary Cole took a punt on their three Brazilians back in 2006, it awakened a stampede to the land of the Samba Kings but no such attention has been paid to nations like Ghana, Nigeria, Cote d’Ivoire, Cameroon, Togo etc. Of course the A-League clubs are still quite new and inexperienced. Many of the international signings are conducted via contact with a limited network of player agents and/or direct from DVDs. You can therefore understand the slowness to link into these countries.

With the growth of African Communities in Australia over the past 10 years, the time seems ripe to take a punt on some young talent from this region. Lets hope there is at least one club out there exploring this path and we soon will see a Stephane Baga or two showcasing their wares in the A-League.