Africa has enormous power and sway as the second biggest voting bloc in FIFA, and as has continuously been proven, whoever is or wants to be president of the governing body has to be a ‘friend’ to the continent, enhancing development through funds, projects and opportunity.
It is not a goodwill gesture - FIFA presidents NEED Africa. It is their DUTY not a favour to grow the game.
The continent doesn’t need to sell its soul, blindly ‘stay loyal,’ silent, or bend and twist to appease whoever is in charge of FIFA.
CAF can set the agenda and stand for the right thing, as it did at the onset against apartheid. It reshaped football for the better and it still can.
Why does it continue to feel it needs to be subservient, to fall in line and be used? To close its eyes and ears? I am reminded of, when the bribery investigations engulfed FIFA, the sign that read: “Sepp Blatter. The only man that attends to Africa’s problems.”
And how the former head of the Zambian FA likened receiving all the perks from him in exchange for votes regardless of whether good or not to “taking houses from Pablo Escobar using drug money.”
Now it happily goes along with Gianni Infantino, the “loyal friend” who did nothing when Omar Artan, the reigning African Referee of the Year was robbed of his World Cup dream, and fans from the continent couldn’t travel due to travel bans or the prohibitive visa bond of $15,000, which was dropped too late and even saw heroic Vozinha’s mother denied the chance to see his historic debut, who made grossly unfulfilled promises about the African Super League, pushed for the change in frequency of AFCON and got his way, ensured it was moved in 2025 to cater for the Club World Cup…
When coaches, players and journalists accused CAF of ceding its best interests to make FIFA happy, Patrice Motsepe said “we have got to move on from this inferiority complex.”
It’s not those who were fighting on behalf of Africa that have the inferiority complex, it is those who don’t understand the scale of its power and great responsibility.
Infantino needs the continent way more than it needs him. Africa can and has to be better than him.
@Enricosimanung1@FalseTenn Was confused the entire match about what Hansi’s instructions were .
On offence , Cancelo was basically taking up the LW , Rashford was uncomfortable the entire time and the team needed an extra player to occasionally take up the half spaces .
The card helped a lot .
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