Onion Dome Of Stained Glass

Five African sides have qualified for the World Cup. With excellent organisation and a few world-class players, can they overcome history?

- Edward De Blaquière

PELÉ once predicted that an African team would win the World Cup before the end of the 20th century—a forecast which in failure would gain infamy as a rod to beat the continent’s sides. It’s not just that no African contender has won football’s grandest prize, none has even reached the final four. To date, the quarter-finals have been the glass ceiling, with African teams thrice reaching the last eight. There are reasons to be optimistic, however, that one of the African five now set to compete in Russia can enjoy a deep run into the tournament, and perhaps even reach uncharted territory.

A noxious soup of factors has undermined Africa’s performance, with internal politics, bonus disputes, the talent drain to Europe, tricky first-round draws, domestic infrastructure and a certain naïveté about game management stymieing the progress of many fine teams. Ivory Coast’s golden generation, for example, had nightmarish draws in both 2006 and 2010, when an injury to Didier Drogba made their task even harder, and then shot themselves in the foot by throwing away the chance of a last 16 berth at the death in 2014. That’s better than Egypt’s own golden generation, however, who proved with their hat-trick of African Cup of Nations successes that they had the quality to thrive in international tournaments, only to fail to qualify during their era of dominance. Internal tumult and disagreements over payment have prompted implosions in Nigeria, Cameroon and Ghana over the years, and it’s perhaps telling that nothing was expected of at least two of the three African sides who reached the final eight in the past.