Saluting Senegal

Pele says African game needs better organization

Updated: Saturday June 29, 2002 01:47 a.m. ET

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YOKOHAMA, Japan (AP) -- Pele, the World Cup's greatest ever star, saluted Senegal for reaching the quarterfinal. But he believes that African soccer badly needs better internal organization before it can come up with a World Cup winner.

Cameroon, Nigeria and now Senegal have flirted with success at soccer's biggest championship. But Pele says that the nations will always be held back by weaknesses at domestic level.

"Senegal was one of the surprises of the World Cup but showed it has a bright future," the three-time World Cup winner said.

"But one of the problems with Africa is the same as South America with most of the stars of Brazil and Argentina playing for clubs in Europe.

"The difference with Africa is that local tournaments are not being prepared very well. They don't have strong leagues and that's where you prepare the good players.

"FIFA should support those countries to have a better organization and better domestic tournaments. This is what makes the countries strong."

FIFA's stance has always been that it is wrong to interfere with domestic tournaments although it would offer help if asked.

A look at the rosters of the five African teams who were among the 32 nations at the World Cup shows how many of them play in Europe because only European clubs can offer them a decent salary.

Only one of the French-speaking Senegalese squad plays in Senegal and another is a goalkeeper for a Moroccan team. The other 21 play in France.

Already English soccer giant Liverpool has hired striker El Hadji Diouf -- voted one of the top 10 players of the World Cup _ from Lens for dlrs 15 million and others are bound to follow to other big clubs.

Cameroon, quarterfinalist 12 years ago and the African Nations Cup and Olympic champion, didn't have a single home-based player. The squad, which didn't make it past the opening round of group games, was spread around Europe with just one with a club from the United Arab Emirates.

Because Nigeria coach Onigbinde Adegboye took the gamble of selecting three of the nation's young home-based players, he left out stars such as Finidi George of England's Ipswich and Sunday Oliseh of Borussia Dortmund. The team went out in the first round although it was in the toughest group with England, Sweden and pre-championship favorite Argentina.

President Olusegun Obasanjo hosted a banquet to honor Nigeria's World Cup squad, but after the disappointing first-round exit, none of the players showed up. According to the media, some of the players had planned to boycott the event because the government had not paid bonuses to team members.

Of the five African qualifiers only Tunisia had a majority of home-based players while South Africa's 23 included seven from its domestic clubs.

While FIFA president Sepp Blatter has promised Africa that it will stage the World Cup soon -- Germany hosts it in 2006 -- and many pundits regard the continent as the future of the game, African soccer still faces a struggle to gain stability.

Riots with massive loss of lives have broken out in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Zambia, Nigeria, Congo and Liberia while soccer officials in several countries have been accused of corruption.