If you look at football talents from the African continent who are currently playing in the English Premier League or who are playing in the top five European leagues spread across the European continent, it seems that they have presented their own uniqueness and facts that are a shame not to be discussed.
Starting from famous names who once had a golden reputation when competing in continental Europe such as Roger Milla (1976), Rabah Madjer (1987), Abedi Pele (1991), George Weah (1994), to the names of other African players in the 1980s. The 2000s are familiar, such as Emanuel Adebayor, Toure Yaya, Kolo Toure, Samuel Eto’o, Michael Essien, Jhon Obi Mikel, Didier Drogba, to the current trending ones, Sadio Mane and Mohammed Salah.
Looking at their reputation alone, we can see and judge that these players do have prominent characteristics and their respective strengths that are worthy of being great players from the African continent. The brilliance of these African players is inversely proportional to what is happening in Asia. Although in the past we have heard that there are several players from the Asian continent who are able to show their best qualities in each of Europe’s top leagues.
Names such as Ali Daei, Cha Bum-keun, Hidetoshi Nakata, Park Ji Sung, Shinji Okazaki, Shinji Kagawa, Keisuke Honda, to Son Heung Min who have shown anyone that players from the Asian continent can also be successful in Europe.
The success of the players from two different continents, namely Asia and Africa, is in fact not only obtained by chance being discovered by professional talent scouts from each of the top clubs from the European continent, but has gone through the coaching and development of early childhood players who This has been going on for a long time so that after the player has successfully honed his mental, talent, and abilities, it will be easy to be promoted by the club or football school concerned to the scouts of the top football clubs from the European continent.
So if you look at the quality side, why does inequality occur between the quality of players from the Asian and African continents who have managed to play in each of the top leagues in Europe?
What makes players from the Asian continent tend to be slow to make decisions when there are offers from blue continent clubs? And why are names like Didier Drogba, Sadio Mane, Mohammad Salah, to Sebastian Haller becoming known as golden football talents from Africa more quickly than players from the Asian continent?
- Football Orientation
Of course this is a reason that actually makes sense if it is explored comprehensively about the background. If you look at the reality that is happening today, many parents, especially in Indonesia, are still worried about the future of their children who are already involved in the world of sports, especially football. Still burdensome on the education side, worried about the future of his son who is only a football player, and many more. This concern actually resulted in the lack of facilitation of children’s interest in being able to develop their interest and love for football.
So that the opportunity to practice, improve the quality of individual games, as well as physical qualities that are not supportive due to children being too forced to go to school rather than giving children the opportunity to explore their football playing abilities. That’s why there are many players from the Asian continent whose fate is only bad on their own continent. If you just look at the African continent, children who are already in love with football there will be directly nurtured and trained by the talent scouts there.
The names of players like Sadio Mane, Kalidou Koulibally, Didier Drogba, to Nabi Keita have been able to show great qualities to become Europe’s top great players. Unlike the Asian continent, of course we are no strangers to names like Son Heung Min who managed to become the second Asian player to be able to penetrate the Champions League final in 2019, and was also recorded as the first Asian player to become the Premier League’s top scorer in the 2021 season. -2022 ago.
However, we can’t just rely on one name, other Asian players must also have the same opportunity as Son. Therefore, the need for coaching early childhood players is expected so that the quality of Asian players in the future can be widely known by the world.
- Lack of investment and unfortunately less investors in their own country
Of course you know and are familiar with a figure named Syech Mansour or Nasser Al-Khelaifi who managed to build an extraordinary reputation by acquiring ownership of top clubs from the blue continent, namely Manchester City and PSG, and managed to turn these clubs into giant clubs with a myriad of quality and talented players. trophy. In fact, if we look at the background or reasons why investors are rich from The Asian continent is willing to spend a lot of money just to advance the quality of the club from the European Continent.
The reason lies in their reputation and investment policies that are not built in their own country. In the Chinese League, for example, the impact of the Covid-19 storm in recent years has forced a decline in revenue, both from the realm of entry ticket revenue to broadcast rights benefits obtained from sponsors. As a result, many Asian clubs are forced to sell their well-known flagship players and instead use local players whose quality is not sufficient to compete at a higher level.
The above is in contrast to what has been done in many European and North American countries. They have planned carefully about investment for clubs that compete in several domestic leagues there. As a result, we will not run out of names of great football players after the retirement of Ronaldo and Messi someday.
- Crisis Of Leaders
If in Latin America, we find names like Marcelo Bielsa who were able to break the world football tactical order or Rinus Michels who invented the Total Football strategy, and the names Ruud Gullit and Joseph Guardiolla who were able to introduce the “tiki-taka” strategy in the world of football, or negative tactics. football is “parking the bus” a la Jose Mourinho and Diego Simeone.
On the Asian continent we will not find such names. The Asian continent has fallen far behind other countries in Europe and America in terms of mastery of football tactics. This can be seen from the fact that there are still many clubs from the Asian continent that still depend on the quality of foreign coaches from the European and American continents. It will be very rare for us to find such a great coach as Shin Tae Yong in the next few years.
- The quality of the competition is monotonous and does not develop
The existence of competitions such as the Asian Champions League and AFC CUP on the Asian continent indeed promises its own challenges for the top players from the Asian continent itself. However, the problem is that it comes from the quality gap in each league from each country that is a contestant in the competition.
The clubs that competed in the Asian Champions League from countries such as Thailand, Vietnam, India, Pakistan, Myanmar, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, and many more were unable to compete when faced with established teams from Japan, Korea, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and China.
As a result, the quality of competition will be increasingly degraded every year. Not to mention that the issue of sponsorship and broadcasting rights has become a separate problem that has not been resolved and has not been able to raise the image and quality of Asian football.
Those are some of the reasons why football in the Asian continent is not as bright as the African continent. In addition to the four factors above. Of course there are many other causes that are the ringleaders of the suboptimal quality of Asian football in the eyes of the world.
ASL
