African teams struggling with their preparations

Despite the big talk and tips of African nations to do well in the first WC finals to be held on African soil, the friendly results so far suggest most if not all African sides involved in the event are facing problems and performing way below par.

The host nation, South Africa for example have failed to qualify to the final round of the joint WC-CAN qualifiers, and thus missed on the CAN finals. They have been held to a 1-1 draw at home vs Bulgaria in their most recent friendly, and despite them having had all the time in the world to prepare for the event they still look like setting a new record being the 1st ever host nation not to make it through the groups stage.

Next comes Cameroon, with Eto’o on cloud 9 after managing to win the treble with Inter. However, the Indomitable Lions have performed badly in the Angola 2010 finals, and most recently (yesterday) have been held to a goalless draw vs Georgia.

Nigerian Super Eagles are no better as they have also been poor and barely made it to Angola 2010 (and the WC finals). They may have reached the final 4 in CAN, but overall their displays were way less than what you would call international class, and then yesterday they drew goalless to Saudi Arabia.

This ‘numbness’ in attack is a worrying sign that African nations could be up for a fairly disappointing campaign in 2 weeks time, especially with Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire also facing problems with their pre-WC final camps starting a bit late and their managers facing difficulties assembling their squads.

Algeria started the pre-WC camp in time but is being swept by a spell of injuries, the latest of which was conceded by Lazio’s Mourad Meghni. Coach Rabeh Saadane has also overlooked some of the veterans responsible for Algeria’s qualification in favour of fresh new faces who have never been capped for Algeria before.

With this in mind, it is a bit too optimistic to expect an African side to be playing in the semi-finals of this WC version. The best an African nation has ever done was for Cameroon to qualify to the QFs in 1990 (knocked out by England) then Senegal matched that in 2002 (knocked out by Turkey)

http://www.footylatest.com/african-teams-struggling-with-their-preparations/14467