Africans have in the past decade or two become big consumers of the English Premier League, a passion they top up with significant spend on the merchandise of their favourite clubs. South Africans have also joined the fray in recent years, with a large portion of football banter on social media being about happenings in the EPL.
Personally I found a story of interest in English football this week through the crowing of Fulham as the champions of the English Football League Championship, the second-tier of the English game.
I took interest in the matter given the impressive size of the Championship, and the historical reputation of the majority of the 24 clubs as previous EPL campaigners. These include really big names of English football in the yesteryear, such as Nottingham Forest who finished fourth, Blackburn Rovers (9th), Queens Park Rangers (12th) and Birmingham (20th).
Apart from the Championship being richer than some of premier leagues in Europe, it is also a highly competitive league which attracts football talent from all over the world, including Africa. That's where my concern lies; how come South Africa does not have players in this league?
Is that how badly things have turned for us that we can't produce players competitive enough to play in the second-tier? Sadly, even the current crop of players in SA not so many of them just do not have the kind of temperament and fitness to be in the third-tier of English football.
The scarcity of SA talent in Europe cuts across, with very little or no representation even in middle strength leagues of countries such as Belgium, Switzerland and Portugal for a few examples. We have no presence to shout about even in smaller leagues such as Austria, eastern Europe and the Scandinavia.
How many foreign players were in the EFL Championship this season? I don't know. But using Fulham as an example, the London team had just six English players in its 35-man squad. First choice goalkeeper Marek Rodak is from Slovakia, the captain Tom Cairney is Scottish while Serbian striker Aleksandar Mitrović top scored with the new EFL Championship record of 43 league goals in a season.
Fulham also have players from Jamaica, Australia and a pair from the US. Ivorian Jean Michaël Seri (pictured above) is the only African-born player, with a youth career at Africa Sports d'Abidjan and pro debut with ASEC Mimosas.
However, his solitary presence with the The Cottagers does not represent the real picture as there are far more African-born players in the Championship and that is good for the progress of the game on the continent.
My parting shot is that question again: what's stopping SA players from shining here as well? Do they even know about the EFL Championship? What do ardent soccer followers think about this issue?
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