Jon Entine:
> Do you really follow soccer Oleg? Almost all of the great West African
> soccer players have fled their countries to play for the great European
> teams. Twenty percent of the British premiership is of West African
> ancestry. Get a grip and study up.
Well, like I said, I am not a journalist :)
And I am not writing science books, I am just positing opinions in a forum.
Randall wrote:
> Loads of them... Kanu, Babayaro, Ococha, Taribo West, Finidi George. All
> from Nigeria. George Weah, Liberia and a former world footballer of the
> year.
You are right. Some of those names do ring a bell.
My point, however, was that on national level,
none of the west african teams are doing great, not even "decent",
which goes back to the training system/facility/club system/tradition elements.
Actually, a small low-key ukrainian club Donetsk Shakhtar just signed up
a Nigerian - one of very few foreigners playing in Ukraine. Does it mean
nigerians are better than, say, italians or french or germans? No, it just
means they come really *really* cheap. There are some decent nigerian players,
but the bottom line - take top 11 of them, put them together and they
are ranked a whopping 55th in the world as a team. 55th! Now, US finishes
4th in World Cross and John here claims US is nowhere close to be competitive
on the world scene, what would he say if US finished 55th instead of 4th?!!
You can tell me all you want about how good Kanu is (who I assumed
was just an african immigrant), but like I said before -
in soccer you are only as good as the team you play for.
And as long as we are talking about Kenya, the corruption scandals
at the top levels of their soccer federations hurt their sport a lot
more than similar corruption scandals would hurt athletics.
Yet another difference is that in soccer you are only as good as the
team you play for, while in athletics there's a very objective way
to measure people up - by their PRs. A very talented soccer player
who is growing up somewhere in rural Kenya or Ethiopia would have tougher time
getting drafted by European club scouts, but on the other hand if some
15-year old is running 3:44 for 1500m or 13:40 for 5,000m, he will get some
attention no matter what country he is from.
A success of players from Nigeria, Cameroon and Ghana have playing for
European clubs could be partially due to the good scouting system within
the country, which makes it easier to identify decent, hard-working players
at early age. US or Canada have a substantial part of population
which traces their roots back to West Africa as well, but they don't
produce great soccer players, despite popularity of soccer at high school levels.
I guess one could argue about basketball and football "stealing" the talent.
But the same doesn't hold true for sprints and field events, where both
countries are rather dominant.
Again, I think the combination of many factors makes it a rather complex
problem.
My original post was rather to compare how different a prize money
of, say, $10,000 will seem for a kenyan, american and russian runner.
Roughly - multiply the award by 10 to get "russian equivalent" and by a 100
to get a "kenyan equivalent".
I wasn't even trying to cross-compare soccer and running - I think in general
comparing different sports is a lot like comparing apples and oranges.
Soccer is a whole different animal, and the path to making the same
$10,000 may be not as straightforward, for a number of reasons.
Oleg.
> on 1/5/01 4:01 PM, Oleg Shpyrko at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> > I personally try to continue to follow soccer, which I admit is not easy
> > living in the US, but I honestly couldn't name a single west african
> > soccer player. Can you?
> Nigeria and Ghana are plundered by European football scouts who take them as
> young as 14. Kenya isn't.
> I don't believe that Kenyans can't play football or that they have the wrong
> body shape. I agree with you, it's facilities, it's culture, it's
> opportunity.
> You are also right... there are no truly great west African football teams.
> As I'm sure you know, every time just before a world cup some commentator
> will say that it's about time an African country won it, that there's going
> to be a great explosion of talent coming from Africa. No there isn't because
> football is ingrained in most countries with big populations.
> Randall Northam
>
