1.3. Football business : emptied Africa of its best
elements.
Most gifted in the national teams juniors, those find
themselves very early where Africa shines more and imposes itself in the world
cuts and the international tournaments reserved on less than seventeen years.
The headhunters of the rich person European clubs come to make
their market there, devoting more and more openly to a plundering African young
talents, for the greatest profit of their purchasers.
With them, is added another species, local, but more
dangerous, because it is unforeseeable in the transactions on the transfers of
young African, including the minors of age. Witness, the Nigerian Nwankwo Kanu,
current member of the English club of Arsenal, champion of Europe of the clubs
in 1995 with Ajax of Amsterdam, which recruited it at sixteen years reports:
« During the World cup juniors in Japan, in 1993, I was literally
attacked by business managers from all Europe. I understood that I was to seize
my chance, and I chose Ajax. » (Africa Football, 1995, p. 40).
« Today, 342 African professional players, more than
it gathered there in South Africa for the final phase of the EDGE, play in
European clubs (including 90 in France): 54 Nigerians, 36 Ghanaians, 31
Zaireans, 24 Algerians, 19 Cameronian, 13 Bast and as many Angolan (Gazetta
dello Sport, 1997). Without counting those which will finish their career close
to the petrodollars of the Middle East. In many countries, it is a good part of
the elite which emigrated; in Zaire and Cameroun, it is half of the national
team; more still in those devastated by the internal conflicts: two thirds of
the national teams of Liberia, of Sierra Leone, of Angola, but also of that of
Ghana. Because, during the civil war, the spectacle continues: national
championship and international meetings.
In 1994-1995, the team of Algeria in disputed twenty, that of
Liberia, twelve, that of Sierra Leone, sixteen, those of Angola, Mozambique and
the Democratic Republic of Congo (ex- Zaire), respectively, ten, twelve and
fourteen. The team of the sporting Youth of Kabylie gained in Algiers, in
December 1995, the final of the Cut of Africa of the victorious clubs of cut.
This painted decoration, in a hardly veiled way, lasts it battle that deliver
themselves people informed to the advertisement of the elections to the head of
the national federations, continental and international of football.
1.4. Football business : Africa victim of its material
poverty.
Sign dependence, Africa does not retain more its sportsmen
that its brains or its natural richnesses. Compared with Europe, the means of
the clubs and federations are ridiculous. On equal level, the remuneration of
the players is there ten to twenty times lower, when it is perceived. And even,
it happens that they make the advance or pay of their pocket the travelling
expenses. Only one match of Cut of Europe of Real of Madrid more reports to the
European Federation of football (the UEFA) that all competitions organized in
one year by its African counterpart, the African Confederation of football
(CIF). (Africa Football, December 1995).
The private financings are limited to the commercial
repercussions that sponsors and patrons can expect some, i.e. little thing on
skeletal markets. As for the public financing, it still rarefied with the
generalization of the plans of structural adjustment.
Lastly, deprived or public, in Africa as in Europe, the money
of football is too often diverted by persons in charge and intermediate
professional for the swindle. ASEC Mimosa of Abidjan, Orlando Pirate «of
Soweto, Petro Sport of Nice Port, Petro Atletico de Luanda, remain the
exceptions: the gold of the Ghanaian mines, in Ashanti country, ensured the
prosperity of the team of Gold Fields d' Obuasi; like tourism that of sporting
Star of the Sahel, in Sousse, in Tunisia; the oil companies, where they are
installed, finance» their «clubs, like Petro Sport of Nice Port,
Petro Atletico de Luanda, and the army, a little everywhere, maintains to them
his on the model the team the royal army Forces (FAR) Moroccan. Elsewhere, in
fact the supporters shareholders bring the funds, as with the ASEC Abidjan, in
Coast-of Ivoire, Vita Club, Motema Pembe (Daring Club) and Dragons of Kinshasa.
At all events, the transfer remains one of the most important
operations which allow the clubs football to be supplied as players, their raw
materials. A good transfer by the acquisition of the talented players could
constitute the starting point of the fortune of a team which was not classified
at the beginning among the richest clubs. That supposes that the club is able
to resell its best players at enticing prices.
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