WHY BIG EUROPEAN TEAMS DON´T SIGN AFRICAN PLAYERS

 With the signing on of Columbian wonder boy, James Rodriguez, the Brazil World cup highest goal scorer by Real Madrid recently and with the signing on of Costa-Rican goalkeeper Kaylor Navas yesterday, I began to really realize  the politics involved in today´s football and the reason why big clubs no longer look towards africa for good players.

  Apart from the fact that the african youth football is a fraud and does not serve the purpose of discovering new talents but recycling old undiscovered over-aged footballers as promising stars, I have finally discovered the main reason why our players in Africa do not attract the real big teams in europe; Real Madrid, Barcelona, Manchester United, Bayern Munich among others. The reason is simple, football has gone beyond knowing how to play the game, a good player should be able to generate money for his club through marketing. That is to say that Big teams will sign a player who is 40% good and with 60% possibility of generating money through the sales of jerseys, adverts and so on to a player who is 80% good but with 0% possibility of making money for his club.

  When James Rodriguez was signed on recently by Real Madrid, almost the whole of the columbian community in Spain came out en masse to welcome him and stopped by at the Real Madrid sports center to pick up James Rodriguez nº10 jersey to give the Jersey a record 502,000 sales in less than 10 days and the sales is still continuing. The Costa-Rican community too have come out to support one of their own as Real Madrid signs on goalkeeper Keylor Navas . Some of the Costa-Ricans interviewed at his presentation before the Fans said that the fact that their compatriot was signed on by Real Madrid is a national pride for them, it was on hearing this that my mind went to Africa, particularly Nigeria.

  Nigerians lack this kind of national pride, I have seen several Nigerians who are Chelsea fans, but I have hardly seen anyone of them with Mikel Obi´s Chelsea jersey, you either see them with Lampard´s jersey, Mata´s Jersey, Fernando Torres´jersey etc, as if they are ashamed to be linked to their compatriot, Mikel Obi. Some Nigerians I know who claim to be Villarreal fans don´t wear Ikechukwu Uche´s jersey but that of other players in the same club, and the same can be said of other nigerians in other teams.

    My question is, why do we not like supporting ourselves? Why do we prefer foreigners to our own people? What is wrong if all the various Nigerian associations and churches in europe march on to the stadium to show their  brother some love when he is being presented in a stadium where he is likely to be the only black man present ? Don´t you know that our brother  need our support to excel in his career? And that even if he is good some teams will most likely not field him if they have another player that plays in his position who is more productive marketwise?

   Let us learn to shelve our envy and come out and support our brothers and sisters doing us proud in their different careers, in this case, football. This is a clarion call on all africans, we are who we´ve got, let us learn to support one another.