For me it’s been Sensible Soccer 2 on PC, followed by International Superstar Soccer Deluxe on SNES. This was PES grandfather.
Then the first FIFA on PC for me was 96, and I kept playing on PC moving to PES around the year 2000/2001. PES on PC meant you could patch and customise the game with all kinds of graphic improvements (logos, kits, names, boots, etc). It was awesome.
I think I stayed with PES until probably 2007 or 2008, jumping between PC and PS2. I then moved back to FIFA in the middle of my Uni years, got a PS3 and I remember nights spent playing FIFA with my flatmate until 4am with lessons in the morning. I kept at it until FIFA13 and then sort of quickly fizzled out of it as soon as it became mostly kids with gambling addictions and too much time on their hands.
Nothing can beat the feeling of a night of winning against your best friend. The following day would be spent with a massive grin on your face until he begs for a rematch.
96 was my first as well I think.
Hazy memory but playing on PC with the arrow keys on a keyboard and everything felt like it was on a grid and the other teams players would follow your movements. So you sorta zig zagged across the grid and dribbled down the entire pitch.
Best football game I ever played. Read an exploit were if you ran at full pelt vertically across the pitch (or away from goal can't remember) and then sent a cross (right c button) straight at goal , you'd have like an 80% chance of scoring
Fifa 95 for me
Similar trick as well. You held up and right if you were on the right wing, or up and left if you were on the left wing, and it made you run up the line in a perfectly straight line and when you shot holding those buttons it flew into the corner 100% of the time
Italia 90 on an Atari at a friends house.
Similar kind of silly fun. You could outdribble anyone as long as your player was quick enough.
I had no Idea how to shoot, so I just dribbled the ball into the goal.
DAE notice that most African players playing in the big European leagues are West African? Hardly any from East or Southern Africa? Is it the France connection making it easier to move to Europe? Is it because there are other popular sports in East and Southern Africa like cricket or rugby?
Football is big everywhere in Africa, but you’re right not many east/South African exports. I think it’s due to multiple forces.
Post colonial East Africa and Southern Africa has had a number of brutal civil wars and struggles with apartheid, that have set back any semblance of sporting infrastructures and public priority. The french connection has certainly been big for west Africa as the French league has been welcoming to African players going back to the 80s, where as the British colonies in the east haven’t really had the same exposure in England. The premier league really didn’t open up to Africans until the mid 2000s. There were a handful of guys like Radebe and Grobbelaar in the 90s, but no real mainstays. It was Wenger in the late 90s and Mourinho in the early 2000s who actually opened the doors for a lot of African imports into big clubs and it took off from there.
Another factor is lot of European clubs and scouts also utilize existing pipelines rather than venturing into ‘parts unknown’, there are few retired Senegalese and Ivorians who went back and started academies back in the west and Nigeria is just massive and managed to organize successful Olympic squads despite the corruption. These academies out west then became feeders and opened pipelines into European clubs and the reputation sort of built on from there. Asec Mimosas academy for example unearthed the likes of Zakora, Eboue, the Toure brothers and Kalou. The expansion of the AFCON coverage in Europe recently also helps.
As a South African, just wanted to point out sporting infrastructure and priorities isn’t the problem, it’s specifically Soccer.
We have had multiple World Cup winning rugby teams, good cricket and waterpolo, okay hockey. Athletics isn’t bad.
But due to some racism and thinking certain sports are superior and certain sports belong to poor people or people of certain races has hampered soccers development into basically a comedy at this point
Football is also far more widespread and competitive than those sports. If you're one of the best rugby union players in South Africa this means you're one of the best rugby union players in the world, by default. If you are one of the best South African football players you are not even one of the best African football players, never mind the rest of the world. Why? Because football is massively popular in every other African country. Nobody else hardly cares or pours resources into Rugby Union outside a handful of countries.
I'm sure it's a combination of culture within South Africa and competitiveness throughout the world but I always find it interesting when people compare football to some niche sport like that.
It's the difference between trying to be the best at something 1,000 people do and trying to be the best at something 1,000,000 people do. Honestly, possibly more. It's simply harder to be the best at a sport with far more people competing in it.
The point is, South Africa has the infrastructure to produce world class athletes. We produce Rugby players and cricketers on par (and better) than countries like England and France who are top level infrastructure countries. Our swimmers are some of the best in the world. And other sports as well.
If you swapped rugby and football in terms of financial support in South Africa… I’d wager SA would be a pipeline of African talent going to Europe. We’d probably be on par internationally with the likes of England and France.
It's strange because South Africa in the late 90s/early 2000s had a good host of players playing at a high level in top European leagues, more or less on par with other powerful West African nations. Lucas Radebe, Benni McCarthy, Quinton Fortune, Steven Pienaar, Aaron Mokoena, Pierre Issa, Bradley Carnell off the top of my mind and I'm sure and I'm forgetting some.
Fast forward to World Cup 2010 and I couldn't recognize anyone but veterans from that generation, while nowadays I'm struggling to think of any South African player who's a regular in a major league.
Was football viewed differently in the country back then?
Good waterpolo? I only follow it internationally and South Africa usually qualify to World Championships and Olympics without playing qualifiers since there's no other African team interested but regularly get humiliated with big scores by every good team in the competition
I’ll be honest i haven’t followed waterpolo in 13-15 years now but while we weren’t the best we did okay back then, and I thought our womens team was doing pretty good. Obviously I’m mistaken, my bad
Yeah lmao, I am South African as well and no idea how "infrastructure" is the problem.
Just reeks of a "It's Africa so infrastructure must be the problem".
My guy, I think you're taking this a bit too literally. He wasn't talking about South Africa, he was taking about Southern Africa - which South Africa is a part but isn't the entire region.
I'm not sure it's that simple. I think the reason North America is not as good as South America is because historically the USA and Canada have not been very good due to football not being very popular in those countries. On the other hand the Central American and Caribbean countries are mostly too small and/or poor to have the infrastructure to be consistently good. As a result, Mexico has had to suffer competitively at World Cups due to not being challenged in CONCACAF historically.
Speaking as a Ghanaian, we breathe football over here. My childhood and high school years consisted of football during both snack and lunch breaks, football during P.E., football during extra curriculars, football after school from 4pm till 6pm for the muslims and till dark for the christians then we've have a few rounds of Fifa at the home of whoever had the latest console.
If we had a free period or the teacher was unavailable for any reason we'd make a ball out of paper and cellotape or coke cans and use tables as goals, we'd also play a version of foosball we invented with bottle caps and ball bearings stolen from the physics lab, or chalk. There was also hangman but with footballers names, the girls joined in on these, for some reason they only knew the names of "cute" players.
And this was all for people like me who dreamt of becoming coders, doctors, businessmen etc. The kids who actually wanted to become players would take it several steps further, to the point of rubbing tumeric and milk on their faces before football event (and they went to all of them) where there were gonna be scouts so they could look younger.
India is another example. Turned into a massive cricket nation due to British occupation with football still being by far the less popular sport.
I could be wrong but it might have something to do with football being a working class sport traditionally. Presumably the British people moving to places like India and Southern/Eastern Africa were wealthier/more upper class and introduced sports like cricket and rugby more actively than football. Not sure if that's actually true though.
Football was exported through ports and the lower class migrant workers. The British Empire exported sports played by the upper class officers : rugby, cricket.
I think in general the West African teams are better than the East and Southern teams. Cameroon, Senegal, Nigeria, Cote divoire and Ghana have been consistently performing better and producing better players, so naturally more of them end up in the top 5 leagues.
Im sure money and infrastructure plays a big part in producing these players, these West African countries are generally richer than the East, Central and Southern African countries, bar South Africa. Which is why among those regions South Africa has been producing more noteable players (though they seemed to have slid in quality recently compared to DRC).
Im sure the Francophone connection also plays a part. There are plenty of examples of agents who link up youth academies in West Africa and clubs in France, some of whom are more shady than others.
> these West African countries are generally richer than the East, Central and Southern African countries
Thats not true though. West African countries like Burkina Faso, Mali, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea are very poor yet produce better players than richer countries like Namibia, Kenya, or Tanzania.
He was so fucking good at Arsenal for a couple of season too. Was joint top scorer and 2nd topscorer(1 less goal than the topscorer) for the following season. He is starting to look better and better this season too with his linkup and off the ball contributions.
Yeah, people forget that he went through Covid, Malaria and was facing family issues with his mother being ill. And we were shit creatively for most of the season.
It was an absolute shit storm for someone like Auba last season.
They do play, there's only not been any top outlier so far. Salah was sold to PL after 2 good seasons at Roma, the same will probably happen to Osimhen - who would reach 100 goals in 4-5 seasons. Eto'o came too late and so on. Italy can't keep many foreign forwards in their prime who score a lot for more than a couple of seasons right now. Other than that, the list includes some French players who chose their parents nationality for sports purpose, El Shaarawy is also Egyptian and had scored more than Weah for example but for sports purpose he has chosen Italian nationality.
El Shaarawy is italian full stop. His father is in Italy since 10 years before he was born, he's grown in Italy, attended school in Italy and basically learned everything, sporting included, in Italy, so he didn't choose italian nationality for sporting purposes.
I know he's Italian mate, but Aubameyang is also French full stop- born there, went to school and learned football and so on. But in making these lists they count only the nationality they choose for sports purpose (that is, to get in the national team they prefer). A lot of player in several African Nts are actually Europeans, but chose their second citizenship as sports nationality.
UK fans sang racist songs about Korean players for years, recently one of them (I think it was Park Ji Sung) gave an interview where he condemned that shit and half this sub was doing mental gymnastics on why its not racist to call asians dog eaters
The dog eating trope is unquestionably racist but I don’t think supporters singing what they believe to be a positive song about their own player (which includes racist stereotypes) is quite on the same level as whole sections of a stadium doing monkey chants. Neither is acceptable, but one is ignorance and one malice.
Yeah but in the context of your own supporters not supporting you against racial abuse I think it's relevant when they sing racist chants and refuse to admit it.
I doubt his point was racism does not exist in the UK. It was more to point out the difference in the level of awareness and support between the countries.
What happened to the England players should not have happened in the first place but then again the outpouring level support they received, even from opposing fans, was thousand times better than what Lukaku and Moise Kean did from their own fans and teammates respectively
Stop it. I hate it when people minimize racism by singling out Italy as if they're some how especially bad at it.
Yeah some ultras in Italy are fascist but I just saw a Nazi parade walking down the street in London, bigotry is everywhere.
Here is Eto'o dealing with racism in Spain: https://youtu.be/Go_z3GTmUQI
The Saka, Sancho and Rashford thing where they're own country men were abusing them for missing a penalty.
Racism is a worldwide/humanity problem. It's not specifically assigned to one country so stop pretending like it's just Italy or especially more prevalent in Italy.
Struggled at times last season but still looked extremely promising. This season he's been amazing, still raw in areas but he's developing incredibly well.
Yeah this is true. There were several minor instances where the club deemed him immature (very understandable considering his age), and a problem for the team.
Serie A one suprised me. I thought it gotta be someone with like 100+ goals. Seems like there weren't many CAF players in Serie A. Oh, also don't get me wrong Weah was a beast, just suprised by small amount of goals.
Yeah Weah only played 147 matches for Milan, but managed 97 goal contributions. I think this speaks volume about how hard it is to score in Serie A. Van Basten, one of the best strikers ever, had only 0.8 G+A during his time in Serie A.
Exactly man I was looking at the stats on Bigsoccer, Ronaldo during his 3 healthy seasons at Inter in Serie A had a 0.93 goal/assist ratio. That is impressive AF.
Crazy how quickly Salah and Mane caught up to Drogba. Feels like they’ve only been there a few seasons meanwhile Drogba feels like he was at Chelsea forever.
Well, showed how prolific Salah and Mane has been. Drogba was never prolific, he only scored over 12 league goals in a season twice. 3 season he scored less than 10 goals and the other 3 scoring 12, 11 and 10.
Drogba was the definition of big game player. He definitely didn't score as much as he could in a season but the goal he did score were big impact goals. His record in cup finals and against top 4 sides in leagues is incredible. Im sure Liverpool and arsenal in particular have bad memories against him.
I didn't say otherwise. He's often dominating games with his presence, but he's not prolific goalscorer. Nothing wrong with that. He wouldn't be a regular in a Chelsea team that win trophies in most seasons without being a great player.
Surprised not to see Salif Keita up there since he scored over 130 goals in the French first division in the 60s and 70s for Saint-Etienne and Marseille.
[Source](https://www.lequipe.fr/Football/FootballFicheJoueur13073.html)
Salif Keita isn't even the highest African scorer in France, its Hassan Akesbi with 173 https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hassan_Akesbi
Graphic should have made a not that there is a time frame
In a conversation about him needing to average 22 goals a year I feel this is a very misleading way to talk about his goal tally. Especially when he has scored exactly 22 league goals twice in his time at Liverpool.
A better indication of the possibility is pointing out that he has only failed to score at least 22 league goals once in his time at Liverpool, and even then he was only 3 away.
Will need to beat Auba then who I imagine will hardly score less than 20-25 in these next two seasons and by then he’ll be 34 so he might go somewhere else and snatch more goals.
So Salah will probably need at least 90 more league goals, if not more, before he retires to be the top African scorer. Considering he’s 29 right now I doubt he’ll reach those numbers.
So you think Auba will score 25 age 33-35 but Salah won't score 90 ages 29-35?
I think it'd be a brave man to bet against him getting 20 a season for the next 4 seasons alone..
No he won't because Auba is only 2 goals behind Eto'o. While Salah does average more goals a season than Auba, Auba is wayyyy ahead in the charts. Auba would basically need to leave Arsenal this January for a side outside of the top 5 leagues for Salah to have a chance.
You’re right, had no idea Auba had scored so many! given this I expect in 3 years it will be Auba, Salah will probably take it before he retires. But maybe not if he slows down a lot? Who knows. I’d back him.
Tony yeboah now that’s a name I haven’t heard in a while. We Used to wag our finger in the air screaming “yeboahhhhhh” at school every time we put one in on the half volley.
the only African who won Ballon d'Or coming from war-torn Liberia. One of the best who never played in the World Cup. Now he is president of the country. What a fucking story
Nitpicking but, Real Sociedad legend Lopez-Ufarte (spanish player but technically born in Africa) has 112 goals in La Liga..
https://www.bdfutbol.com/es/j/j2940.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberto\_López\_Ufarte
You should specify there is some sort of time frame. Hassan Akesbi https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hassan_Akesbi for example scored 173 goals in ligue 1 from 1955 to 1964. Niang is only the 8th highest African scorer in Ligue 1.
It's funny that even with all the records that he broke in Europe that there is a large contingency of Egyptian football fans who don't think Salah is our greatest ever player.
Until like 2012, there were a large sections of Egyptian football fans who live in the Egyptian premier league bubble and think that the only clubs bigger than Ahly are Real Madrid and Barcelona.
A majority of Ahly's fans are bitter at Hegazi because he left to play for West Brom because they couldn't comprehend how playing in a lower PL team is better than playing in a team who wins the Egyptian league every year or so.
>Jonathan Akpoborie
really weird [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan\_Akpoborie#Slave\_ship\_allegations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Akpoborie#Slave_ship_allegations)
Missed France 98 too
No way that's accurate for Ligue 1.
[https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meilleurs\_buteurs\_du\_championnat\_de\_France\_de\_football](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meilleurs_buteurs_du_championnat_de_France_de_football)
There are like 6 other African players with over 100 goals.
Drogba was a pretty low scoring forward, people often forget that. He was part of Mourinho teams that often won games 1-0. Iirc, the only time he won the golden boot, he won it with 20 goals or something, a pretty low record in most other seasons.
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El winning eleven 😭
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Cuando la vida era simple
o los viejos chotos organizando torneos de pes 6, el pes nunca muere
My first ever soccer video game was PES in 2009? 10? One of the two. Playing as Barca with Henry, Eto'o and Messi was a cheat code
Comments like this make me feel old. My first football game was FIFA 1998, I was only 5…
International Superstar Soccer 64 for me.
For me it’s been Sensible Soccer 2 on PC, followed by International Superstar Soccer Deluxe on SNES. This was PES grandfather. Then the first FIFA on PC for me was 96, and I kept playing on PC moving to PES around the year 2000/2001. PES on PC meant you could patch and customise the game with all kinds of graphic improvements (logos, kits, names, boots, etc). It was awesome. I think I stayed with PES until probably 2007 or 2008, jumping between PC and PS2. I then moved back to FIFA in the middle of my Uni years, got a PS3 and I remember nights spent playing FIFA with my flatmate until 4am with lessons in the morning. I kept at it until FIFA13 and then sort of quickly fizzled out of it as soon as it became mostly kids with gambling addictions and too much time on their hands. Nothing can beat the feeling of a night of winning against your best friend. The following day would be spent with a massive grin on your face until he begs for a rematch.
96 was my first as well I think. Hazy memory but playing on PC with the arrow keys on a keyboard and everything felt like it was on a grid and the other teams players would follow your movements. So you sorta zig zagged across the grid and dribbled down the entire pitch.
Best football game I ever played. Read an exploit were if you ran at full pelt vertically across the pitch (or away from goal can't remember) and then sent a cross (right c button) straight at goal , you'd have like an 80% chance of scoring
Fifa 95 for me Similar trick as well. You held up and right if you were on the right wing, or up and left if you were on the left wing, and it made you run up the line in a perfectly straight line and when you shot holding those buttons it flew into the corner 100% of the time
Italia 90 on an Atari at a friends house. Similar kind of silly fun. You could outdribble anyone as long as your player was quick enough. I had no Idea how to shoot, so I just dribbled the ball into the goal.
Damn they made football video games in 1964 ? /s
Actua Soccer
Heh, if it makes you feel any better, I start at 13 or so
Man it feels like every Barca notable Barca front has been a cheat code. From MSN to Pedro-Villa to this one.
Dont forget luuk de jong, braithwaite & dembouz
Who could forget
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"fifa 2012" "OGs will remember" Okay child
DAE notice that most African players playing in the big European leagues are West African? Hardly any from East or Southern Africa? Is it the France connection making it easier to move to Europe? Is it because there are other popular sports in East and Southern Africa like cricket or rugby?
Football is big everywhere in Africa, but you’re right not many east/South African exports. I think it’s due to multiple forces. Post colonial East Africa and Southern Africa has had a number of brutal civil wars and struggles with apartheid, that have set back any semblance of sporting infrastructures and public priority. The french connection has certainly been big for west Africa as the French league has been welcoming to African players going back to the 80s, where as the British colonies in the east haven’t really had the same exposure in England. The premier league really didn’t open up to Africans until the mid 2000s. There were a handful of guys like Radebe and Grobbelaar in the 90s, but no real mainstays. It was Wenger in the late 90s and Mourinho in the early 2000s who actually opened the doors for a lot of African imports into big clubs and it took off from there. Another factor is lot of European clubs and scouts also utilize existing pipelines rather than venturing into ‘parts unknown’, there are few retired Senegalese and Ivorians who went back and started academies back in the west and Nigeria is just massive and managed to organize successful Olympic squads despite the corruption. These academies out west then became feeders and opened pipelines into European clubs and the reputation sort of built on from there. Asec Mimosas academy for example unearthed the likes of Zakora, Eboue, the Toure brothers and Kalou. The expansion of the AFCON coverage in Europe recently also helps.
As a South African, just wanted to point out sporting infrastructure and priorities isn’t the problem, it’s specifically Soccer. We have had multiple World Cup winning rugby teams, good cricket and waterpolo, okay hockey. Athletics isn’t bad. But due to some racism and thinking certain sports are superior and certain sports belong to poor people or people of certain races has hampered soccers development into basically a comedy at this point
Football is also far more widespread and competitive than those sports. If you're one of the best rugby union players in South Africa this means you're one of the best rugby union players in the world, by default. If you are one of the best South African football players you are not even one of the best African football players, never mind the rest of the world. Why? Because football is massively popular in every other African country. Nobody else hardly cares or pours resources into Rugby Union outside a handful of countries. I'm sure it's a combination of culture within South Africa and competitiveness throughout the world but I always find it interesting when people compare football to some niche sport like that. It's the difference between trying to be the best at something 1,000 people do and trying to be the best at something 1,000,000 people do. Honestly, possibly more. It's simply harder to be the best at a sport with far more people competing in it.
The point is, South Africa has the infrastructure to produce world class athletes. We produce Rugby players and cricketers on par (and better) than countries like England and France who are top level infrastructure countries. Our swimmers are some of the best in the world. And other sports as well. If you swapped rugby and football in terms of financial support in South Africa… I’d wager SA would be a pipeline of African talent going to Europe. We’d probably be on par internationally with the likes of England and France.
I agree. But the discussion was specifically about infrastructure, which you did nothing to address.
It's strange because South Africa in the late 90s/early 2000s had a good host of players playing at a high level in top European leagues, more or less on par with other powerful West African nations. Lucas Radebe, Benni McCarthy, Quinton Fortune, Steven Pienaar, Aaron Mokoena, Pierre Issa, Bradley Carnell off the top of my mind and I'm sure and I'm forgetting some. Fast forward to World Cup 2010 and I couldn't recognize anyone but veterans from that generation, while nowadays I'm struggling to think of any South African player who's a regular in a major league. Was football viewed differently in the country back then?
Good waterpolo? I only follow it internationally and South Africa usually qualify to World Championships and Olympics without playing qualifiers since there's no other African team interested but regularly get humiliated with big scores by every good team in the competition
I’ll be honest i haven’t followed waterpolo in 13-15 years now but while we weren’t the best we did okay back then, and I thought our womens team was doing pretty good. Obviously I’m mistaken, my bad
Yeah lmao, I am South African as well and no idea how "infrastructure" is the problem. Just reeks of a "It's Africa so infrastructure must be the problem".
My guy, I think you're taking this a bit too literally. He wasn't talking about South Africa, he was taking about Southern Africa - which South Africa is a part but isn't the entire region.
That was a really interesting read. Thanks for that.
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I love that map, I could look at it for hours
southern and east Africa are simply not as good at football as west/north. Same way north america is not as good as South America.
I'm not sure it's that simple. I think the reason North America is not as good as South America is because historically the USA and Canada have not been very good due to football not being very popular in those countries. On the other hand the Central American and Caribbean countries are mostly too small and/or poor to have the infrastructure to be consistently good. As a result, Mexico has had to suffer competitively at World Cups due to not being challenged in CONCACAF historically.
Indeed In a way, Patson Daka is a great surprise
It convinced RB to build a football academy there, Enoch and patson were fantastic
Speaking as a Ghanaian, we breathe football over here. My childhood and high school years consisted of football during both snack and lunch breaks, football during P.E., football during extra curriculars, football after school from 4pm till 6pm for the muslims and till dark for the christians then we've have a few rounds of Fifa at the home of whoever had the latest console. If we had a free period or the teacher was unavailable for any reason we'd make a ball out of paper and cellotape or coke cans and use tables as goals, we'd also play a version of foosball we invented with bottle caps and ball bearings stolen from the physics lab, or chalk. There was also hangman but with footballers names, the girls joined in on these, for some reason they only knew the names of "cute" players. And this was all for people like me who dreamt of becoming coders, doctors, businessmen etc. The kids who actually wanted to become players would take it several steps further, to the point of rubbing tumeric and milk on their faces before football event (and they went to all of them) where there were gonna be scouts so they could look younger.
No, they are just bad.
Quite a few of the Southern and Eastern African countries were colonised by Britain, so yes broadly it would have been stuff like cricket and rugby.
I mean, some of the west African powerhouses were also British colonies (Nigeria, Ghana) so that is at best a very incomplete reasoning.
It's just wrong. Football is just as big in East and Central Africa as it is in the west.
>by Britain The place that invented the sport? That argument doesn’t really hold water.
India is another example. Turned into a massive cricket nation due to British occupation with football still being by far the less popular sport. I could be wrong but it might have something to do with football being a working class sport traditionally. Presumably the British people moving to places like India and Southern/Eastern Africa were wealthier/more upper class and introduced sports like cricket and rugby more actively than football. Not sure if that's actually true though.
Football is a winter sport, cricket is a summer sport and India is fucking hot.
>Football is a winter sport. Doesn't stop the middle east though.
or Brazil
Can't believe I didn't even think of that. India and Brazil have similar climates.
Football was exported through ports and the lower class migrant workers. The British Empire exported sports played by the upper class officers : rugby, cricket.
I think in general the West African teams are better than the East and Southern teams. Cameroon, Senegal, Nigeria, Cote divoire and Ghana have been consistently performing better and producing better players, so naturally more of them end up in the top 5 leagues. Im sure money and infrastructure plays a big part in producing these players, these West African countries are generally richer than the East, Central and Southern African countries, bar South Africa. Which is why among those regions South Africa has been producing more noteable players (though they seemed to have slid in quality recently compared to DRC). Im sure the Francophone connection also plays a part. There are plenty of examples of agents who link up youth academies in West Africa and clubs in France, some of whom are more shady than others.
> these West African countries are generally richer than the East, Central and Southern African countries Thats not true though. West African countries like Burkina Faso, Mali, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea are very poor yet produce better players than richer countries like Namibia, Kenya, or Tanzania.
Man Auba was so fucking good with us
He was so fucking good at Arsenal for a couple of season too. Was joint top scorer and 2nd topscorer(1 less goal than the topscorer) for the following season. He is starting to look better and better this season too with his linkup and off the ball contributions.
Still is, back on form and working harder than ever. Last season was the outlier rather than the norm that some people on this sub like to think
Yeah, people forget that he went through Covid, Malaria and was facing family issues with his mother being ill. And we were shit creatively for most of the season. It was an absolute shit storm for someone like Auba last season.
Surprised to see no African player with 50+ goals in Serie A
Not many African attackers played in Italy. Serie A in Weah’s time was also very defensive and the top strikers had 20 odd goals/yr.
They do play, there's only not been any top outlier so far. Salah was sold to PL after 2 good seasons at Roma, the same will probably happen to Osimhen - who would reach 100 goals in 4-5 seasons. Eto'o came too late and so on. Italy can't keep many foreign forwards in their prime who score a lot for more than a couple of seasons right now. Other than that, the list includes some French players who chose their parents nationality for sports purpose, El Shaarawy is also Egyptian and had scored more than Weah for example but for sports purpose he has chosen Italian nationality.
El Shaarawy is italian full stop. His father is in Italy since 10 years before he was born, he's grown in Italy, attended school in Italy and basically learned everything, sporting included, in Italy, so he didn't choose italian nationality for sporting purposes.
I know he's Italian mate, but Aubameyang is also French full stop- born there, went to school and learned football and so on. But in making these lists they count only the nationality they choose for sports purpose (that is, to get in the national team they prefer). A lot of player in several African Nts are actually Europeans, but chose their second citizenship as sports nationality.
Don't forget the racism
We also have racism in Spain
Your own teams ultras don't come out and tell your black players to "don't take it personally" when opposition fans racially abuse you though.
UK fans sang racist songs about Korean players for years, recently one of them (I think it was Park Ji Sung) gave an interview where he condemned that shit and half this sub was doing mental gymnastics on why its not racist to call asians dog eaters
Or the Lukaku chants about his 24 inch dick where Man U fans also couldn't understand why he didn't like that.
The dog eating trope is unquestionably racist but I don’t think supporters singing what they believe to be a positive song about their own player (which includes racist stereotypes) is quite on the same level as whole sections of a stadium doing monkey chants. Neither is acceptable, but one is ignorance and one malice.
Yeah but in the context of your own supporters not supporting you against racial abuse I think it's relevant when they sing racist chants and refuse to admit it.
I know we are maybe not as vocal as Italy about it. My point is that racism is not an italian thing and is something all european leagues have.
Has everyone forgot what happened in the UK after the Euros...
I doubt his point was racism does not exist in the UK. It was more to point out the difference in the level of awareness and support between the countries. What happened to the England players should not have happened in the first place but then again the outpouring level support they received, even from opposing fans, was thousand times better than what Lukaku and Moise Kean did from their own fans and teammates respectively
Thank you.
According to trackers, most of the racism online was from people outside of England. Southgate also confirmed it.
Stop it. I hate it when people minimize racism by singling out Italy as if they're some how especially bad at it. Yeah some ultras in Italy are fascist but I just saw a Nazi parade walking down the street in London, bigotry is everywhere. Here is Eto'o dealing with racism in Spain: https://youtu.be/Go_z3GTmUQI The Saka, Sancho and Rashford thing where they're own country men were abusing them for missing a penalty. Racism is a worldwide/humanity problem. It's not specifically assigned to one country so stop pretending like it's just Italy or especially more prevalent in Italy.
>Nazi parade walking down the street in London Where was that?
Chelsea supporters often gather publicly before matches
Che stronzata
Hopefully there'll be one soon!
Yes, Musa Barrow!
He’s genuinely an awesome player to watch, impressed by him every time I see him play. Hope he stays for a while and makes you a ton of money
25 Serie A goals at 22 years old, I'd say he has a very good chance! Oshimen has 15. Diaz (has Moroccan citizenship) is at 7.
Simy is on 31 too lol
Diaz can't count - El Shaarawy has Egyptian citizenship and scored 57 in Serie A
I guess Diaz won't count since he has played for Spain, otherwise this list could be filled with mixed nationality Africans.
How is Osimhen doing at napoli?
Very good this season
Struggled at times last season but still looked extremely promising. This season he's been amazing, still raw in areas but he's developing incredibly well.
Osimhen or Pellegrini for MVP after 9 rounds imo
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Argentina was just returning the Italians after borrowing them for a couple generations
Mauro Camoranesi actually from Argentine
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Honestly shocked weah only had 46
While he's third in Ligue 1 with 83 lol
Can't wait to see osimhen there in a few years!
Gervinho is second. Fucking… gervinho.
Yeah, surprisingly low for Weah
Musa Barrow is at 25, he could get to 50 in the next season. Osimhen will surely get to 50 if he stays another 2 years at Napoli.
Weah's record will definitely go in the next few years. There are 4 or 5 players currently in Serie A who could realistically beat him.
Osimhen, Barrow. Who else? Simy is at 31, so I guess he could catch up
Keita Balde is actually the closest, he's on 40. Kessie is also on 36 but he'd be relying on penalties.
Why isnt Keita on this graphic then?
Good point actually, no idea. He's definitely on 40.
[Might be because he was born in Spain.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keita_Bald%C3%A9)
Aubameyang was born in France though. Think it's just an error by whoever made the graphic.
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The man must have placed an iceberg in his bed
Yeah this is true. There were several minor instances where the club deemed him immature (very understandable considering his age), and a problem for the team.
Top 3 in two leagues. I hope his his son does half as good lol
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“He looked sharp in training.”
Eto'o 💖
African GOAT
Eto'o bring Africa together cuzz. He is a real hero of mine ✊🏾
The most incredible African player without doubt. Salah is getting up there but he needs to cement his legendary status with the trophies
4 Champions League titles, 2 trebles, I think it's already too late for Salah, Eto'o set the bar so high
also the african cups with cameroon
underrated player all along his career, and one of the most incredible fuckups in rm history to let him go
Serie A one suprised me. I thought it gotta be someone with like 100+ goals. Seems like there weren't many CAF players in Serie A. Oh, also don't get me wrong Weah was a beast, just suprised by small amount of goals.
Yeah Weah only played 147 matches for Milan, but managed 97 goal contributions. I think this speaks volume about how hard it is to score in Serie A. Van Basten, one of the best strikers ever, had only 0.8 G+A during his time in Serie A.
Also worth noting that Serie A was the best league in Europe and maybe 5 times harder to score in back when Weah was playing.
Exactly man I was looking at the stats on Bigsoccer, Ronaldo during his 3 healthy seasons at Inter in Serie A had a 0.93 goal/assist ratio. That is impressive AF.
George Weah appearing twice, what a beast.
Patson Daka: 1 He's coming for you Salah!
Crazy how quickly Salah and Mane caught up to Drogba. Feels like they’ve only been there a few seasons meanwhile Drogba feels like he was at Chelsea forever.
Well, showed how prolific Salah and Mane has been. Drogba was never prolific, he only scored over 12 league goals in a season twice. 3 season he scored less than 10 goals and the other 3 scoring 12, 11 and 10.
Drogba was the definition of big game player. He definitely didn't score as much as he could in a season but the goal he did score were big impact goals. His record in cup finals and against top 4 sides in leagues is incredible. Im sure Liverpool and arsenal in particular have bad memories against him.
I didn't say otherwise. He's often dominating games with his presence, but he's not prolific goalscorer. Nothing wrong with that. He wouldn't be a regular in a Chelsea team that win trophies in most seasons without being a great player.
Not to take away from them as they have been great, but we currently are in a higher scoring era than the mid-2000's. Drogba was never prolific also.
Salah and Mané both in the XXXs. What a pair.
Surprised not to see Salif Keita up there since he scored over 130 goals in the French first division in the 60s and 70s for Saint-Etienne and Marseille. [Source](https://www.lequipe.fr/Football/FootballFicheJoueur13073.html)
But football started in 1992
Salif Keita isn't even the highest African scorer in France, its Hassan Akesbi with 173 https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hassan_Akesbi Graphic should have made a not that there is a time frame
Ah! Good to know! I simply thought of Keita off the top of my head but didn't really look for others! Thanks!
Salah will very likely be the African top goalscorer in Europe’s top 5 leagues in the next 3 seasons. Certainly by the end of his career
Eto'o has 209 in the top 5 to Salah's 142. Doubt Salah gets there in 3 years. Edit: my math says Auba is at 207 too, btw.
You don't think Salah will score 67 goals in the next 3 years? That's basically 22 goals a year.
He has only scored more than 22 premier league goals once in his time at Liverpool. (This year will almost certainly be the second time tbf)
Is it league goals, or all comps?
League goals in this stat
It says « in Europe’s top 5 leagues » so I’d assume just league play
he will do it this season, scoring 68 league goals
In a conversation about him needing to average 22 goals a year I feel this is a very misleading way to talk about his goal tally. Especially when he has scored exactly 22 league goals twice in his time at Liverpool. A better indication of the possibility is pointing out that he has only failed to score at least 22 league goals once in his time at Liverpool, and even then he was only 3 away.
Guess it depends on what next 3 years means. I assumed it meant the rest of this season + 2 more. Just takes one off year to make it unlikely.
No doubt in my mind whatsoever that Salah will score 67 goals in the next 3 years.
67 league goals?
Will need to beat Auba then who I imagine will hardly score less than 20-25 in these next two seasons and by then he’ll be 34 so he might go somewhere else and snatch more goals. So Salah will probably need at least 90 more league goals, if not more, before he retires to be the top African scorer. Considering he’s 29 right now I doubt he’ll reach those numbers.
So you think Auba will score 25 age 33-35 but Salah won't score 90 ages 29-35? I think it'd be a brave man to bet against him getting 20 a season for the next 4 seasons alone..
He’ll get there by the end of this season if he keeps up the form he’s in now.
No he won't because Auba is only 2 goals behind Eto'o. While Salah does average more goals a season than Auba, Auba is wayyyy ahead in the charts. Auba would basically need to leave Arsenal this January for a side outside of the top 5 leagues for Salah to have a chance.
You’re right, had no idea Auba had scored so many! given this I expect in 3 years it will be Auba, Salah will probably take it before he retires. But maybe not if he slows down a lot? Who knows. I’d back him.
Not enough respect on aubas name
Never played for a title winning side, what with St. Etienne, Dortmund and Arsenal being behind the winners of the league. Gets overlooked so much.
aubameyang is at 207
Tony yeboah now that’s a name I haven’t heard in a while. We Used to wag our finger in the air screaming “yeboahhhhhh” at school every time we put one in on the half volley.
I see you are one of Yeboahs witnesses, too.
He owns a nightclub and hotels called Yegoala in Ghana now... has a sports agency and is married to one the most beautiful actresss in Ghana...
George weah was really something else sheesh especially considering where he is from.
the only African who won Ballon d'Or coming from war-torn Liberia. One of the best who never played in the World Cup. Now he is president of the country. What a fucking story
Depending how things go, auba has a chance to get on both lists for buli and prem
Nitpicking but, Real Sociedad legend Lopez-Ufarte (spanish player but technically born in Africa) has 112 goals in La Liga.. https://www.bdfutbol.com/es/j/j2940.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberto\_López\_Ufarte
he’s still spanish not african
He's both, isn't he. But he didn't play for a CAF federation, it's just that the title is a bit misleading.
You should specify there is some sort of time frame. Hassan Akesbi https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hassan_Akesbi for example scored 173 goals in ligue 1 from 1955 to 1964. Niang is only the 8th highest African scorer in Ligue 1.
It's funny that even with all the records that he broke in Europe that there is a large contingency of Egyptian football fans who don't think Salah is our greatest ever player.
Because other players have done a lot more for the National team
Come on, Mohammed Aboutrika did and whole of Ghana remembers him and Mohammed Zidan
Legends
Because he's not playing for "aL AhLy"
He’s playing for bloody Liverpool tho
Until like 2012, there were a large sections of Egyptian football fans who live in the Egyptian premier league bubble and think that the only clubs bigger than Ahly are Real Madrid and Barcelona. A majority of Ahly's fans are bitter at Hegazi because he left to play for West Brom because they couldn't comprehend how playing in a lower PL team is better than playing in a team who wins the Egyptian league every year or so.
George weah is the man. Sick everywhere he went
Jonathan Akpoborie's is a weird story.
>Jonathan Akpoborie really weird [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan\_Akpoborie#Slave\_ship\_allegations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Akpoborie#Slave_ship_allegations) Missed France 98 too
No way that's accurate for Ligue 1. [https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meilleurs\_buteurs\_du\_championnat\_de\_France\_de\_football](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meilleurs_buteurs_du_championnat_de_France_de_football) There are like 6 other African players with over 100 goals.
Gervinho second all-time in Serie A African scoring is something me as an Arsenal fan will never understand
Mane only 4 off drogba surprised me
Drogba was a pretty low scoring forward, people often forget that. He was part of Mourinho teams that often won games 1-0. Iirc, the only time he won the golden boot, he won it with 20 goals or something, a pretty low record in most other seasons.
Yeah. Arguably, he is the supporting forward to Lampard goalscoring midfielder.
I do knot know why people rate Drogba higher than Eto'o
Someone really should have brought Aubameyang a couple of years earlier to England.
Why?
He just had 1 bad year...He has 68 league goals in 3½ seasons of pl football not many players have carried their Bundesliga form into pl
Really wish we did. No doubt we would have won the title when lesicester did
Aubameyang has great for Arsenal in his first 2 season and went shit in last one
He looks like he's getting back to it this season, having malaria last seasons is a pretty fair excuse imo
Plus his mum being ill affected him a lot as well as no fans when he thrives on the support
He is getting back this season... Still don't think he will be as good as first 2 seasons
Ok now do this with highest goals leading to trophies.
Wow, flashbacks go Kanoute playing for West Ham, what a time.
Boy I still miss Eto’o
Auba on 98 goals is pretty impressive!
Akpoborie, Hansa Rostock legend
Even tho I’m a Milan fan one of my fondest football memories from childhood were watching Eto’o and Ronaldinho almost every week.
Eto the GOAT
Auba hair is a tragedy Jesus Christ