Europe’s Loss, Africa’s Gain

While Africa is getting excited about next month’s kick-off of the African Nations Cup in Angola, many clubs in Europe are dreading the start of the competition.

For them it will mean that a number of important players from the countries such as Ghana, Ivory Coast and Nigeria will be away on international duty.

Every two years the ‘club vs country’ issue comes to the fore at this point, and both sides have valid arguments when one considers their differing perspectives for a moment.

The clubs want to hold onto players whose wages they pay on a weekly basis, as they do not want to be paying for a player to go and take part in an international tournament while domestic leagues, cups and competitions go on as normal.

Another major issue is that a number of players return from such competitions with injuries, and once again the player receives wages whilst having injured himself in the colours of his national team, rather than that of his club side.

The player must then recover from the injury, meaning the club loses the player for an extended period of time.

From the national team’s side it is also fair that these countries benefit from the use of their best players based throughout Europe and the world, as this is their premier continental championship, determining the champions of Africa every two years.

The pride of playing for one’s country is something that should be respected by the clubs, but they are the entities who stand to lose the most during and after the January tournament.

Many people have called for the tournament’s timing to be changed to the end of the season, with some saying that playing it every four years instead of two, like the World Cup, would allow for the players to go to the competition with the blessing of the clubs, while giving the players some much-needed rest from the congested calendars of modern football.

The Nations Cup is traditionally staged in the first two months of the year because of the continent’s unpredictable weather conditions in the summer months. The rainy season hits western and central Africa in June and July, while the weather in South Africa, which will be hosting the 2010 World Cup in those two months, is usually cool.

The competition is staged in different countries every two years to make it fair and to allow the whole of Africa to benefit from the tournament, so changing the timing does not seem to be a viable option.

The second reason why changing the tournament to June or July would be unlikely is the fact that the World Cup takes place at that time every four years, and this would force the African tournament to revert to a four-yearly affair, or change to alternate years, avoiding the World Cup as a result.

Coaches of the top European sides containing African players are becoming increasingly irritated with the damaging consequences of the Nations Cup being staged in the middle of the season, but there is little chance of it being moved to accommodate the rich clubs spending millions on some of Africa’s finest.