Africans play harder for club than country

It is a bit of a disappointment for me to see some of our African teams performing poorly at the World Cup. wish we could have had more teams that put themselves in positions to qualify for the next round.

We have quality in Africa and for us to see most of our teams failing to advance to the next stage is sad.

We are resting our hopes on Nigeria and Senegal to represent the continent in the knockout stages.

The conversation that we need to have in Africa is about what are the things that are lacking in the African game.

We have players who are individually talented but we are struggling to integrate that individual talent into a team structure or team synergy.

The lack of this will always be detrimental to the African game.

Yes, we do need individual brilliance, especially going forward, but that individual creativity has to be put into a team structure.

Also, there is this feeling that when top players who ply their trade abroad are playing for their national teams, they don’t work as hard as they do for their clubs.

Senegal’s Sadio Mane is a prime example of this.

It seems as though he is not working hard, he is always waiting for the ball to come to him, although at certain stages he does work hard, but that leads to inconsistency.

At Liverpool he is always making runs and creating scoring opportunities for his team-mates.

Yes, he has scored a goal for the Lions of Teranga but I feel he could have done a lot more.

One thing that I have observed is that a lot of players who are playing abroad seem to hold an upperhand over those who are based on the African continent.

The reason is we are not detailed enough.

The information is there and we have to develop our players according to the requirements of modern football in the mental, tactical and technical aspects.

If we can address these issues, I believe Africa can produce locally based players who can do just as well on the global stage, unlike now when we want our players to go abroad.

We need to create that experience for them on the continent.

Above and beyond that, having players who are playing abroad week in and week out will always bring much-needed positivity in the team because these guys have the experience and the know-how when it comes to playing for the top teams and against top players on big stages.

The only thing we need is to be systematic and teach our players how to behave in certain areas, meaning, we need to increase

the football intelligence based on the position that they are playing. Also, our players’ technique is still lacking and the technical teams are aware of this.

I don’t think we teach players enough in order for them to excel in their technical skills because our players do possess those technical skills but are not at the level that they are supposed to be.

I always maintain, however, that we need to find the balance.

I strongly feel we can do well with teams that are composed of 90% locally based players.

We don’t want to have a situation where players always have to go overseas to learn those technical skills – we need to instil that in our players ourselves.

As African coaches, we need to work on the global football trends and we will do well.