Failure of South African players to make an impact at top European Leagues (PART1)

It’s a sad state of affairs to realise the truth that South Africa export very few players to top European leagues and most are failing to make an impact on top of that. Obviously there are certain factors that cause or rather linked to that, which can be categorised as (a) environmental facets (b) personality factors and (c) financial factors. However, these factors are/can sometimes be interwoven, in a sense that a certain player suffers from both 3 factors and 2 of the mentioned reasons.

To think that players from other African regions easily make it in top European Leagues makes one worry and imagine what’s wrong with our players, who we think are talented, skilled and technically astute or what’s wrong with our league in terms of preparing the players for the rigorous top European leagues, however, one don’t see anything wrong with our league’s competitiveness cause some African players are using it as a stepping ladder to overseas leagues, the likes of Benjamin Mwaruwaru, Onyekanchi Okonkwo, Siaka Tiene and so forth.

Before one can proceed further, it is of fundamental importance to mention that, in this context, the top European leagues are those who enjoy the global television exposure, worth a lot of money and possess teams which you’ll always find in the knockout stages of the European champion’s league, otherwise, the argument and assertion being made will hold no water because Mzansi players are spread throughout the whole Europe, particularly weaker and mediocre European leagues.
The leagues, in one’s opinions, which are regarded as the top European leagues are the following, in chronological order; (1) English Premiership (2) Spanish La Liga (3) Italian Serie A (4) French Ligue 1 (5) Germany’s Bundesliga (6) Portuguese La Liga and (7) Holland’s Eerste division.

And mediocre leagues include the Russian League, Scottish premiership and Greek League and weaker leagues include bo-Danish, Swiss, Swedish, Ukranian, Romanian, Serbian, Finnish and the rest of Eastern Europe.

It is as well, important to mention that, even the second division in a top European Footballing nation, like English first division, La liga second division, in this, argument is regarded as a weaker league.

by Sthembiso…
"The Return of the General"