When they say “some people are more equal than others”, they must be talking about world football player awards, bafethu.
The latest awards event, the Best Fifa Football Awards, was hosted in Milan on Monday night and Africa once again didn’t get a fair shake.
African superstar Sadio Mane, who has starred for club Liverpool and country Senegal the past year, was only good enough for the honourable mentions list as one of the candidates for the Best Footballer award.
Argentina and Barcelona superstar Lionel Messi won this year’s award, beating Mane’s Dutch teammate Virgil van Dijk and Portugal and Juventus’ Cristiano Ronaldo.
The expectation was that Mane would at least make the Fifpro Team of the Year, but the Reds’ star forward missed out, and so did his other teammate Mohamed Salah of Egypt.
All this after losing out at the Uefa Awards a few weeks ago.
In my opinion, besides German head coach Jurgen Klopp, Mane was the main man for Liverpool, but somehow whatever his teammate Van Dijk did in the same team colours was deemed more deserving for the Uefa Men’s Player or the Year gong.
ANOTHER WIN: Lionel Messi. Picture: EPA
This makes me wonder sometimes if national reputation plays a role in this whole thing, because I’m still scratching my head trying to figure out how Van Dijk was better than Mane in the Champions League?
Remember the Uefa award is for performances for clubs in the Champions League, not Premier League and not Uefa Nations League.
Even if they decided to include performances for club in the league, Mane was there in the best player conversations.
If you add national team, Senegal qualified for the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations without losing a single match.
REPRESENTATION: Kylian Mbappe made the Fifpro XI team. Picture: Charles Platiau/Reuters.
Plus the Lions of Taranga reached the final in Egypt where they lost out to Algeria, who in Riyad Mahrez have another African player who doesn’t get his just dues no matter how well he does for club and country.
Roll back three years when Leicester City won the league, Mahrez was clearly the star of the show there, but French midfielder N’Golo Kante was the guy everyone was talking about.
It makes me wonder if the same fuss would have been made about Kante if he was a player for his parents’ country of Mali?
I mean, Kylian Mbappe made the Fifpro XI team and he plays for Paris Saint-Germain ouens, oh and France of course. Would he have made the team if he played for his father’s Cameroon or Algeria where his mother is from?
The last African star to win a world Player of the Year award was Liberia’s George Weah back in 1995.
No reward: Reds’ Mo Salah. Picture: Eddie Keogh/Reuters.
In fact he’s the only one ever!
So kids, we need you to understand the levels that exist out there.
Mane is creating a hole for you as the next big African star.
In your mind right now as a kid from the Cape Flats, you need to start believing that you too can be in that conversation like Benni McCarthy was in his prime.
So African child, even though you are swimming against the tide, please know that it is possible if you take advantage of the sacrifices made by today’s African heroes!