The world’s two top soccer players have flipped spots and wear new jerseys but have familiar paychecks, earning a combined $235 million this season.



Before 24 hours had passed on the news that soccer great Cristiano Ronaldo had ditched Italy’s Juventus to join England’s Manchester United, the superstar striker became the best-selling player on the Fanatics sports merchandise site. He topped the sales for other top players who jumped teams in recent years, including the NFL’s Tom Brady in 2020, the NBA’s LeBron James in 2018 and MLB’s Bryce Harper in 2019.



But his sweetest win may have been outselling soccer rival Lionel Messi, who just weeks earlier had announced he was leaving Barcelona to join Paris Saint-Germain.



It’s the kind of selling power that comes from being the world’s most popular athlete—with more than a half-billion followers across Facebook (149 million), Instagram (344 million) and Twitter (94.3 million)—and helped him reclaim the top spot on this year’s&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;ranking of the highest-paid soccer players in the world.



Ronaldo is set to earn $125 million before taxes in the 2021-22 season, with $70 million coming from salary and bonus for his return to United, where between 2003 and 2009 he delivered three consecutive Premier League titles and a Champions League crown. The rest comes from personal endorsements and partnerships with brands including Nike, Herbalife, Clear and his ever-expanding CR7 branded portfolio that includes perfume, underwear, eyewear, hotels, gyms and more. Only&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/athletes/">three other active athletes</a>&nbsp;make more commercially: Roger Federer ($90 million), LeBron James ($65 million) and Tiger Woods ($60 million). And there is no sign that Ronaldo is slowing down, with the 36-year-old still outperforming plenty of his opponents in Europe, most of whom are ten years his junior: Ronaldo marked his return to Man U’s Old Trafford by hitting the back of the net twice. He now has four goals in three games on the season in the world’s best league.



Knocked out of the No. 1 spot is his longtime rival, the 34-year-old Lionel Messi, who after 21 years at Barcelona—and a soap-opera year of departure drama—jumped to PSG, where he will be paid $75 million this season, helping put him at No. 2 on the list with $110 million. Messi was forced to jump after Spain’s La Liga clamped down on FC Barcelona’s wage spending, forcing the club to end negotiations with its record six-time world’s top player of the year, who had played for Barça since he was 13 years old. He’ll pad his PSG paycheck with an estimated $35 million in endorsements from the likes of Adidas, Pepsi, watchmaker Jacobs &amp; Co and Budweiser, which he just picked up last year under a three-year deal.



In total, the ten highest-paid soccer players are expected to collect pre-tax earnings of $585 million this season, up from last year’s $570 million. Salary and bonus make up the bulk of the total—$415 million—and are up&nbsp;a modest 2.6%&nbsp;from last year as most clubs continue to be cautious in the face of&nbsp;uncertainty around emerging Covid-19 strains. In May, UEFA, Europe’s governing body of soccer, released a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.uefa.com/insideuefa/news/0269-1253ff5b31fa-d405a08e420d-1000--football-s-solidarity-in-face-of-covid-shock/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">report</a>&nbsp;that said its top-flight clubs were facing a whopping $8.5 billion pandemic-related revenue loss, putting a damper on major player movement.



Still, the big-ticket jumps at the top of the list show the lucrative earning power of global soccer’s top players, who outearned their peers in North America’s MLS by a factor of ten.



PSG now claims three of the world’s five highest-paid players, including the 29-year-old Neymar, who lands at No. 3 once again with $95 million, and the 22-year-old Kylian Mbappe, who is No. 4 with $43 million. Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah, 29, rounds out the top five with $41 million.&nbsp;This year, the 37-year-old Andres Iniesta returns as the only player from a non-European team, landing at No. 7 with $35 million after signing a two-year contract extension with Vissel Kobe in Japan, his club since he left Barcelona in 2018.



To compile our list, we spoke with clubs, players’ agents, commercial sponsors and worldwide soccer experts. All figures are converted to U.S. dollars using the current exchange rate and include salaries (pre-tax) for the 2021-22 season, bonuses and endorsements. Transfer fees are excluded.



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After Ronaldo finished last season with Juventus as the top goal scorer in Series A and won the award for the best player in the European Championship, Manchester United announced he was&nbsp;<a href="https://www.manutd.com/en/news/detail/cristiano-ronaldo-completes-transfer-to-man-utd-from-juventus" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">coming home</a>&nbsp;to Old Trafford, where he previously played from 2003 to 2009, scoring 118 goals in 292 games for United. Over his 18-year career, he has won 32 major trophies, including five UEFA Champions League titles, the UEFA European Championship for his native Portugal and seven league titles in England, Spain and Italy, making him the first player to win titles in the three countries. In early September, the 36-year-old set a record as the greatest goal scorer of all time in international soccer when he hit the back of the net for the 110th time in his country’s World Cup qualifying win against Ireland. Ronaldo has made&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/christinasettimi/2020/06/04/ronaldos-105-million-year-tops-messi-and-crowns-him-soccers-first-billion-dollar-man/">over $1 billion</a>&nbsp;in career earnings before taxes, the first team-sport athlete in the world to hit that milestone.



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It was the end of a glorious era when Barcelona announced that Messi would not continue with the club because of La Liga financial obstacles. Over his 21 years with the only team he ever knew, Messi scored 672 goals and had 268 assists on his way to 35 titles and 78 awards (including a record six Ballon d’Or trophies for the sport’s best player). He also pocketed $875 million in salary and bonus and another $350 million from endorsements for a total of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/christinasettimi/2020/08/21/the-next-billion-dollar-athlete-lionel-messi-closes-in/">more than $1 billion</a>&nbsp;over his career. His new salary at PSG is a cut from what he would have made if he could have stayed at Barça but keeps him the sport’s highest-paid player on the pitch, along with Neymar, with who he reunites in Paris after being teammates in the Catalan capital from 2013 to 2017.



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Neymar traded playing in Messi’s shadow in Barcelona for PSG in 2017, with a record $263 million transfer fee, and helped take the club to its first Champions League final last year. This May, the 29-year-old signed a four-year contract extension to stay in the French capital until 2025 and remain among the highest-paid on the team. He then helped the club court Messi, which led to their eventual reunion. After an early exit of his contract with Nike over a reported assault allegation from a Swoosh employee, Neymar signed a shoe deal with Puma that has celebrated his flashy style. This March, he debuted a “creativity collection” of shoes and apparel in loud color schemes. Last November, the social media sensation—he is the third-most-popular athlete on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, with 284 million followers—left TikTok and signed a deal to make video content exclusively as an ambassador for Triller.&nbsp;



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This past spring, the 22-year-old Frenchman turned down a contract extension with PSG that would have given him a bump to put him on par with Neymar’s pay and kept him with the club until 2024. The 2021-22 season is the last on his current contract. PSG hopes signing Messi is incentive for the Ligue 1 three-time Golden Boot winner to negotiate to stay, but it may be time for him to venture beyond and claim the bright spotlight that is rightfully his to inherit. Mbappe has amassed more career goals than either Ronaldo or Messi had at his age. He is also making more than they were at his age, too, in part because commercial sponsors have recognized his potential earlier on. Last year, EA Sports gave him the solo cover of&nbsp;FIFA 21, making him one of the youngest to ever do so. This year, it announced he will be back as the face of&nbsp;FIFA 22, making him the first since Cristiano Ronaldo to get back-to-back covers.



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With two years remaining on the 29-year-old’s current deal, Salah and Liverpool are in negotiations to keep the star striker at Anfield. He’s proven a legend on and off the pitch. Since joining from Roma in Italy in 2017, he has been among both Liverpool and the Premier League’s top goal scorers. Last October, he scored his 100th for his club, becoming the fastest to do so in its history. No other Premier League player has scored more over the same time. He has also become the face of Muslim athletes in the game, and an important one at that. A recent&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/can-exposure-to-celebrities-reduce-prejudice-the-effect-of-mohamed-salah-on-islamophobic-behaviors-and-attitudes/A1DA34F9F5BCE905850AC8FBAC78BE58" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">academic study</a>&nbsp;found that after Salah joined Liverpool, hate crimes in the city dropped by 16%, and Liverpool fans halved their rates of posting anti-Muslim tweets relative to fans of other top-flight clubs.



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The 33-year-old’s contract expires in 2023, and his performance as back-to-back German player of the year is prompting rumors of suitors. The last time he failed to score for Bayern was in February; he is currently on a 19-game scoring run and this month became the first Bundesliga player to score in 13 straight home matches. He is making a run at the title of best player in the world—not only on the pitch but also off it: He has launched his RL9 brand of clothing, adding to his endorsement earnings from Nike, Huawei and Head &amp; Shoulders, among others.



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Iniesta moved to Japan on a two-year contract with Vissel Kobe in 2018 after a 22-year career with Barcelona came to an end. The midfielder has since helped the club win the Emperor’s Cup in 2019, qualify for the AFC Champions League for the first time and win the Japanese Super Cup in February 2020. This past April, on his 37th birthday, he signed a contract extension to keep him with the club until 2023.



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Ten months ago, Pogba’s future at United was uncertain. But since the signing of Cristiano Ronaldo and his French international teammate Raphael Varane, reports suggest he is leaning toward signing a contract extension. The 28-year-old is in the middle of a ten-year shoe contract with Adidas that is worth an estimated $45 million.



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After clashing with his manager Zinedine Zidane at Real Madrid, Bale was sent on loan to Tottenham last season. Zidane’s resignation at the end of the 2020-21 season after the club failed to win one trophy paved the way for the 32-year-old to return to the Bernabeu for the last season on his current contract. Since proudly displaying a banner that read: “Wales. Golf. Madrid. In that order.” after his country qualified for Euro 2020, Bale has been linked to a post-soccer career on the links. He has been endorsing TaylorMade since 2020, even taking part in a full-day fitting on YouTube with the golf-club maker.



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In 2019, Real Madrid paid Chelsea $118 million to sign Hazard to a five-year contract that puts him on par with Gareth Bale with a $26 million annual paycheck. But the Belgian international has struggled, missing 59 games in his first two seasons with the club. Real Madrid manager Carlo Ancelotti recently questioned his ability to play in two successive games. There is a growing rumble in the media that the club is trying to unload him, as soon as January. Off the pitch, Hazard is the poster boy for McDonald’s in his native Belgium and has deals with Nike and Nissan.



By&nbsp;Christina Settimi, FORBES STAFF

soccor final

The World’s Highest-Paid Soccer Players 2021: Manchester United’s Cristiano Ronaldo Reclaims Top Spot From PSG’s Lionel Messi

In the game of life, there are always seats reserved for fame, fortune, luck and divine intervention. Add grace and fortitude to the mix and you’ll get a great rags-to-riches story. This has been the run of play so far for Kanu Nwankwo, the Nigerian soccer star who has written his name across world football.
In his 35 years, Nwankwo has become a shining star; a poor boy from the streets who became a global champion and authentic African hero. Now in the twilight of his career, he plays out his footballing days with English club Portsmouth. He is also a devoted husband and father of three, who is fashioning himself into a savvy investor in Nigeria. His £10,000 a week for kicking a ball are being poured into real estate, the hospitality industry, art, photography and philanthropy.
On the soccer field, Nwankwo can do no wrong. His admirers cheer his moves on the field, expecting his every touch of the ball to lead to magic; easily forgiving him when he miskicks or falls down during one of his numerous tricky sorties goal. And when he howls or winces in pain on the pitch, they cry and howl in solidarity. When he scores and breaks into his peculiar two-finger salute and dance, swaying from side to side and flapping his arms in jubilation, they laugh and fall in love with him all over again. That’s blind loyalty for you. Crazy, but that’s what loyal devotees of the game do for their gods.
“Papillo”, as he is fondly called by his fans, is adored by soccer enthusiasts from across Africa and worshipped in his homeland. A level head and obvious sense of propriety off the field is earning him more respect.
Nwankwo’s posh and polished lifestyle is a far cry from his early days. Surrounded by the social accessories of achievement—security guards, butlers, personal masseurs and hairstylists, mansions in the ritzy parts of Lagos
and London, first class air travel, chauffeur-driven SUVs and sedans, you get the picture—he maintains an easy, friendly mien. “I always remember how and where I started,” he says during his FORBES AFRICA interview.
Nwankwo and his three siblings grew up in eastern Nigeria. His older brother, the original “Papillo”, also played soccer in secondary school, until a knee injury shattered his career.
So “Papillo’s brother”, as Nwankwo was then known, gradually earned the name through sheer soccer brilliance, playing his way out of his rustic beginnings into the bright lights.
“My parents were not rich but they were modest, hardworking people,” he told FORBES AFRICA. “They always encouraged us to work hard, pray and do our possible best in whatever we were doing,” he says.
“They never discouraged me from playing football. It’s kind of funny, but everyone believed in me then… I was always winning, throughout my primary and secondary school days. I was always being picked to play for our school teams and later representing my state in age group competitions, and I was always team captain.”
His natural talent for the game earned him many friends early in life, and of course, some extra cash.
“I was having fun, going to school and making some money from football; everyone wanted me to play for their team,” he says.
One of his first clubs, semi-professional Federal Works, used to send a scout to fetch him from home and seek his parents’ permission ahead of their weekend fixtures.
“So I used my talent to support my upkeep…I used the money to buy clothes and books,” he says.
Talent always travels. He didn’t stay at Federal Works, where he scored nine times in 30 games, for too long. Richer, bigger clubs noticed him. In 1992, he laced his boots for Nigerian club side Iwuanyanwu Nationale, playing for slightly over a year before signing for AFC Ajax of Amsterdam for €207,047.
“Ajax was where I had my first taste of international pro football and became a man, soccer-wise. My dream of playing professional football abroad had come true.
“I was happy… It was also a difficult time for me. Suddenly, I found myself in Europe. Everything was new and strange–the environment, the food, the weather, the people, the culture, but I had no choice but to cope,” he says.
Beyond these niggling issues, his star shone brightly at Ajax. His skills matured as the team won three Dutch league titles, the UEFA Champions League trophy, the UEFA Super Cup and the Intercontinental Cup.
Back home, he was captain of the “Dream Team”—the name of Nigeria’s soccer team that travelled to the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games. Nwankwo helped to demolish soccer giants Brazil and Argentina, winning Nigeria’s first-ever gold medal from Olympic soccer.
A promising future beckoned. He was young, at the top of his game and famous—the perfect blend of talent and tactical discipline. Football and fortune featured in his
future plans.
Just before the 1996 Atlanta Games, Internazionale Milan had shown serious interest in the young man. That summer, for about $4.7 million, Ajax released Nwankwo to the Italian Serie A club. A few weeks later, in Rome, disaster struck. A medical examination revealed he had a potentially life-threatening heart defect.
His reaction was disbelief and denial. Nwankwo and many of his fans were in shock. He had no family history of heart disease. He wondered how the ailment could have been undetected by his previous clubs. He sought varied medical opinions, hoping to debunk the diagnosis.
“Finally, when I realized that ‘oh yes, I may not play football anymore’, I knew that I still had a lot in me. I just put myself in God’s hands. At that time, I was like, well, okay God is going to do it for me. Doctors said I could fix the heart problem later on, but I would not be able to play football. Or, I could do corrective surgery right away and see how things turn out. I felt it was better for me to do the operation rather than wait to do it later. It was the lowest point for me in my career,” he says.
The rest of the story is part of the Nwankwo legend. He had successful heart surgery to replace an aortic valve in the USA in November 1996, recovered well and was back on the practice pitch six months later. “Coming back from that episode was wonderful, you know; I had to be tough, but growing up as a kid toughened me up, so my background growing up in Nigeria helped, it gave me hope that I can achieve under whatever circumstances,” he says.
Nwankwo is forever grateful to Inter Milan president Massimo Moratti for his support during this period of his career.
“Moratti and the rest of the Inter Milan team were fully behind me, they didn’t once stop paying me… they were constantly praying for me to come back. I wish every club president was like him; that’s a huge lesson in loyalty for the rest of the sports world,” he says.
Going under the knife to fix a faulty heart artery did not in any way affect Nwankwo’s football wizardry. He stayed with Inter Milan for another year, and moved on to Arsenal in 1999, playing with panache for the English club for the next five seasons. He has also played for other English sides— West Bromwich Albion and Portsmouth, signing a new three-year contract with the latter in August 2010.
Nwankwo’s illustrious international soccer career with Nigeria spanned 16 years at the national team level and 21 years at the club level. He is clearly one of Nigeria’s most celebrated footballers, with a Nigeria Premier League trophy; three Dutch League titles; a UEFA Champions League medal; a UEFA Cup medal; one English Premier League Cup; three English FA Cups; an Olympic gold medal; and the FIFA U-17 title to his name. He has also featured in several FIFA World Cups and African Cup of Nations tournaments.
He was voted CAF African Footballer of the Year in 1996 and 1999, and the BBC African Footballer of the Year in 1997 and 1999.
Nwankwo succeeded teammate and friend Austin ‘Jay Jay’ Okocha as captain of Nigeria’s national team, the Super Eagles, between 2006 and 2010. He won 86 caps and scored 13 goals for his country and is the joint most capped Nigerian player of all time alongside mid-field maestro, the late Muda Lawal.
He holds the record for most substitute appearances in English Premier League history, appearing from the bench 118 times. As the season came to a close, Portsmouth was struggling to avoid relegation at the bottom of the English Championship. Beset by financial problems, the future of the club is uncertain. Nwankwo says he will stick with Portsmouth through thick and thin.
Back home in Nigeria, there is much to do. Inspired by his near-tragic experience, he set up the Nwankwo Heart Care Foundation in 2000. Funded mainly by the soccer legend and a small coterie of friends, he says the foundation has sponsored over 450 indigent children from all over Africa for surgery in England, Israel and India over the last decade.
“I kind of carry the burden of Africa on my shoulders; everyone prayed for me when I was ill,” he tells FORBES AFRICA.
“We get letters from all over Africa. The demand for medical aid from across the continent is huge and our aim is to help any poor African kid who has any medical problem. It’s been very difficult raising funds.”
His grand vision for the foundation is to have specialist hospitals for kids in several African cities. “It’s a very big task, a huge hurdle, and we hope that governments and the private sector in Africa and the Middle East can come to support our noble cause,” he says. The first of such facilities will be a N5 million cardiac hospital for under-12s in Abuja, Nigeria’s administrative and diplomatic capital.
“As a kid, I wanted to be the best man in football. But now, it’s a mixture. FIFA has given me a gold medal for my contributions to football, so I think that now, everyone will at least remember me as ‘Kanu the great footballer’. But what I would really like to be remembered for is as the man who gives hope and joy back to those who need it through our work at the Kanu Heart Care Foundation.”
<div id="attachment_795" style="width: 778px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-795" class="size-full wp-image-795" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/KX0P1956.jpg" alt="" width="768" height="1017" />Portsmouth &#8211; Portrait &#8211; kanu &#8211; 24/11/2006</div>
<h3>Kanu On African Football</h3>
Kanu Nwankwo bade farewell to international football with a testimonial game in April 2011. The match featured ex-Nigerian stars and Nwankwo’s colleagues and friends playing in Europe and Africa. 
Now, as a UNICEF Ambassador for Sports, he gets to go to big cities and to the nooks and crannies of the continent, preaching football, giving speeches at town hall meetings and inspiring young folks to attend school as well as play soccer. 
On football administration and management, and the future of the game in Africa, he says: “For me, the most important thing about football in Africa is the administration. The people in charge need to rev up their act. If we don’t have the right people in football, we will keep going round in circles. The game is undergoing an interesting time in Africa. No country is an underdog anymore in Africa… every team has to work very hard, football in Africa is growing so fast…” 
On the matter of foreign coaches versus indigenous coaches: “It all depends on management, but we just can’t sit down and condemn our local coaches. It’s all about constant retraining and refreshing. The football federations need to invest in their human resources; we have seen cases where our African coaches have done well even with little support, while foreign coaches who get all the attention and support of their FAs (football associations) fumble when it matters most.” 
He is modest about his net worth, maintaining that his life has been a blessed one. So which Kanu does he prefer to hang out with: is it Kanu the footballer, Kanu the philanthropist, Kanu the businessman or Kanu the family man? “I would say, Kanu the family man, because family comes first. My family is the key to whatever I have achieved in life. God has blessed me with a wonderful wife, Amarachi…our match is made in heaven.” 
His relationship with food can be described as indigenously continental. “I eat all types of food. I can’t stay for long without eating Nigerian food: I either go out to a Nigerian or African restaurant to eat it, or I buy the ingredients. I have to eat African food at least once every week. That’s why we tend to eat Chinese – it’s the closest thing to hot and spicy jollof rice.”

Braveheart

As I’m sure you can imagine, right now I am a very proud man. To see the Zambian players lift the Africa Cup of Nations trophy in Gabon was a truly incredible moment for me, as I’m sure it was for every Zambian.
There are no short cuts when it comes to winning a major tournament like this. If you’re an underdog, sooner or later you will come up against the big teams and if you want to succeed, you have to be able to beat anyone. And that is exactly what we did.
This success has been the result of many years of planning, going back to Zambia’s failure to qualify for the 2006 World Cup. It was then that we went back to the drawing board and set out four points for the next five years:
<ul>
<li>To take Zambian football into a new dawn, both on and off the field; nationally, continentally and globally.</li>
<li>To galvanise the nation by re-igniting the passion of each and every Zambian for their national teams and clubs.</li>
<li>To strive to attain the highest standard of football through sustained development, key partnerships and international exposure.</li>
<li>For Zambian football to become a continental powerhouse and reclaim its rightful place in African football once again.</li>
</ul>
<div id="attachment_697" style="width: 520px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-697" class="size-full wp-image-697" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/RTR2XK1S.jpg" alt="" width="510" height="322" />Zambia&#8217;s soccer team players pay homage to victims of the Zambian Air Force Buffalo DHC-5D plane crash, along the Atlantic Ocean in Gabon&#8217;s capital Libreville, February 9, 2012. The specially arranged Air Force Buffalo carrying Zambia&#8217;s national football team ditched into the Atlantic Ocean about 500 metres offshore from Libreville on April 27, 1993, killing all 25 passengers and five crew members. Zambia will play Ivory Coast in the final match of the African Cup of Nations football tournament at the Stade De L&#8217;Amitie Stadium on February 12. REUTERS/Thomas Mukoya (GABON &#8211; Tags: SPORT SOCCER DISASTER)</div>
This dream was well documented and one that we followed for six years. We put various structures in place, we stuck to our beliefs and I am so happy to look back now and see all that hard work has paid off. Our vision has been achieved; now we have to work even harder to maintain and to improve.
Our biggest asset is our team spirit. The Cup of Nations winning squad isn’t full of superstars playing for top European clubs; it is a predominantly African-based group of players. Five of the squad are based at home in Zambia; eight in South Africa; and five with the DR Congo giants, TP Mazembe, while midfielder Jonas Sakuwaha is with Al-Merreikh in Sudan. Captain Chris Katongo and James Chamanga play in China and the young midfielder, Chisamba Lungu, is in the Russian second flight with Ural Sverdlovsk. Only the centre-forward, Emmanuel Mayuka, plays for a top-flight European club, Swiss side Young Boys.
But they are a very tight-knit team. The players all know one another’s strengths and weaknesses, and that comes from having been developed as a unit over the past few years. We have generated a new crop of players, who are young and determined. As I said, we may not have big names, but we have a team unit, and teamwork is vital for success. You can list all the superstar players you like but if they can’t play together as a team, they won’t win anything. Our togetherness has been our defining strength at the Cup of Nations.
We are also blessed with a fantastic coach in Hervé Renard. He is very popular and respected among the players, but he is also not afraid to impose discipline. And perhaps most importantly, the players believed in and embraced his philosophy and tactics.
Hervé ensured the players were prepared for everything and anything. We rode our luck at times, but slowly the boys started to believe in themselves. We believed in the system we played, we believed in the tactical approach, we believed in the substitutions that were made at key points in games.
Before the competition, we told the players that we had one opportunity and that all we could do was give it our best shot. And as the competition progressed, the more they believed in themselves, the better they played.
Of course, it is particularly poignant that we were crowned champions just a few kilometres away from the exact location where my team-mates perished after their plane went down some 19 years ago. I thought it was important, before the tournament started, to tell the players that if we got to Libreville, it would be emotional because not a day goes past without us thinking about what happened in 1993. When we went to the Sabelir Beach in Libreville to lay wreaths in remembrance of the team that perished there, something truly magical happened. The loud single clap of thunder when we arrived, the curiously warm Atlantic Ocean water and the way in which the waves came up and took the wreaths straight back into the sea were all small, unexplained and enchanting signs that something special was happening.
Since that fateful day in 1993, there have been many highs and lows. But to finally be crowned champions of Africa is the ultimate tribute to those we lost that day. If they were still with us, they would be very proud of this team. Their dreams are our dreams, and the dream to become African champions has come true. For me personally, after reaching the AFCON final in 1994 as captain, with a brand new squad, and narrowly losing to Nigeria, to finally raise the trophy in Libreville at this year’s final is nothing short of the stuff dreams are made of.
We went to the Cup of Nations with humility and soulful inspiration; our boys were incredibly motivated and had great aspirations. Before the competition started, no one would have given us a chance. Now Chipolopolo have made history. Never underestimate the heart of a champion.

Enchanting Signs That  Something Special Is Happening

On March 18, football fans in green and white T-shirts flocked to Kenya’s Nyayo National Stadium to watch the country’s two major clubs playing. But 25 minutes from the end of the game, the referee stopped the match between Gor Mahia and AFC Leopards after fans threw plastic bottles onto the field in protest against one of his decisions.
While condemning the incident, a radio presenter had this to say: “We did not wish them to be unruly, but at least we have fans inside the stadium. That’s a good sign.” The match was sold out.
For the last decade, the country’s sport has been in chaos. Rival federations each ran their own leagues; football chiefs were corrupt, inefficient and ranked high on the list of people Kenyans hated most. A crowd of 100 at a match was considered an achievement. At one point, FIFA banned Kenya from international football after the minister of sports disbanded the Kenya Football Federation (KFF). The body was then charged with running the sport. In 2007, Kenya’s football hit rock bottom as the country’s FIFA ranking fell to 115.
Players in most clubs went for months without pay, resorting to manual work to pay their bills. Pessimism filtered into the national team, which did not qualify for the African Cup of Nations. This was hard to bear for a country that loves football so much that a fan committed suicide after Arsenal’s 2009 Champions League defeat.
But the last few years have seen a football revival. The rivalry between KFF and Football Kenya Limited (FKL) ended when FIFA gave FKL the mandate to run the sport. Recently elections ushered in a team under the banner of Football Kenya Federation (FKF). Then 16 clubs broke away from the squabbling factions to form the Kenya Premier League Limited, which runs the local league. It is owned by the clubs, the federation and representatives of other football stakeholders.
It’s the best decision the clubs could have made. Companies are pouring money into the sport, fans are flocking to the stadiums and footballers are competing for attention with hip-hop artists in the gossip columns.
The sport is also attracting new investors. SuperSport, the South Africa headquartered pay channel has paid $12 million to air KPL matches in a deal expected to run until 2015. SuperSport’s head of Africa, Gary Rathbone, says they spend close to $43,000 a match to air more than 100 games on the channel each season.
“Kenyans love football, so when management got its act together, it was natural for us to partner with them,” says Rathbone. The station has trained more than 20 Kenyans to work in the production department.
Danish investors have also moved in for a piece of the pie. In March last year, they invested $93,000 in futaa.com, a football website that had recorded 1.6 million hits by the end of March this year.
“Our investment in football was because of the opportunity that presented itself. There was no credible site to provide information on players and other important data,” says chief editor at futaa.com, Patrick Korir.
Local business is getting involved too. East African Breweries has forked out $1.3 million to sponsor the national team. This is in addition to the amount it spends on Tusker, its KPL club and top of the league last year. It follows Mumias Sugar, Tuzo and East African Portland Cement, which have spent a total of over a million dollars to sponsor teams at KPL.
The rise of football has also encouraged entrepreneurs. Congolese millionaire Elly Kalekwa has invested millions in Sofapaka, a team that won the league in its debut in 2009. Nkaari Martin, a businessman in his early 20s, won funding to expand Ticket Masters, a firm that had the monopoly to sell match tickets last season.
“In 2007, I attended a league game that had 37 spectators. More than 100,000 tickets were sold last year,” says Korir.
And, players are now being paid for their efforts. Internationals like MacDonald Mariga and Dennis Oliech have inspired local footballers with their flashy rides and bevvies of beauties. Others like Allan Wanga have taken the game a notch higher. Wanga launched a book in March this year at an event attended by Prime Minister Raila Odinga.
Despite these gains, hurdles remain. Rathbone says stadiums need to be improved to meet international standards. Only two are qualified to host international matches and one of them is under repair.
“Our football is still mainly political, so our fortunes will remain scant until the day we hit equilibrium between business and politics. Then, business sense will take over,” says Martin.
“And we need to develop our structures, like a young under-19 team,” says Korir. Fans hope the national team, which has not won a major trophy in seven years, can replicate the success at club level.
Though there is still disagreement, this much those on opposing sides recognize: Kenya’s football is no longer scoring an own goal. That is a good start.

Kenya’s Football Revolution

On May 2, it will be exactly half a century since a bunch of highly talented African footballers led Portuguese giants Benfica in the thrashing of Real Madrid 5-3 to retain the European Cup.
It was a dynamic team with an African heart. The captain was from Angola, the goalkeeper, midfield general and striker were all from Mozambique. Arguably, the most talented of all, nicknamed The Sacred Monster, was a midfield genius who had fought his way up from the streets of Maputo. Another of the players rejoiced in the name, The Black Panther. A dream for an advertising copywriter or a public relations executive, surely?
In June, it will be two years since the FIFA World Cup kicked off in South Africa. Since then, there has been a lot of talk about how Africa could sell itself, its football and folklore. After all, the football fans of the continent appear to buy enthusiastically into the plastic razzmatazz around European football, with its endless programs and promos on satellite TV. At football grounds across Europe, there are statues and pictures of the famed players of the past, many of whom may not have even made it into the Benfica team that mauled Real Madrid in 1962.
<div id="attachment_690" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-690" class="size-large wp-image-690" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/DSC00350-1024x768.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="356" />Captain José Águas and Mário Coluna celebrate beating Barcelona in 1962</div>
The question is: why doesn’t Africa celebrate its heroes and rich history with such vigor?
Now, any advertising wizard worth their salt, with a yen to market African football, could do a lot worse than start with the story of the four African musketeers of Benfica in 1962. What a quartet they were: José Águas, the captain, was born and bred in Luanda; goalkeeper Alberto da Costa Pereira was born in the tiny Mozambique port of Nacala and learned his football at Ferroviario in Maputo; Eusébio—The Black Panther—dribbled his way through the dust of the streets of Maputo to an international career with Portugal, scoring 733 goals in 745 competitive games.
Last, but certainly not least, the tough and intelligent midfield schemer, Mário Coluna. Like Eusébio, Coluna learned to fake, dribble, trap and pass on a patch of sand in the Maputo township of Mafalala—a piece of ground that survives until this day and is still full of barefoot youngsters kicking a ball. I can almost hear an advertising executive thinking about this one.
A Portuguese sports journalist dubbed Coluna ‘O Monstro Sagrado’—The Sacred Monster—because he said the player was both terrifying and beautiful. Surely, only a Latin romantic, a journalist to boot, could have come up with a name as evocative.
Coluna, who had the sleek and robust physique of a light-heavyweight boxer, scored one and laid on another on the night Benfica trounced Real Madrid in Amsterdam. He outwitted Real, who had legends Puskás and Di Stéfano in their side. The year before, Coluna had scored with a blinding long-range volley as Benfica beat Barcelona 3-2, in Bern, to win the cup for the first time. Coluna celebrated, stripped to his waist, with trophy in hand, alongside his captain and fellow African, Águas. It is a picture that hangs in pride of place on the wall of his Maputo home to this day.
In the prime of his career, Coluna went on to lead the famous Magricios, considered to be one of Portugal’s finest teams, to the 1966 World Cup in England. In that famous team were two more men from Mozambique, Vicente and Hilário. In those days, colonial Portugal saw Mozambique and Angola as its overseas provinces and players from these countries were considered Portuguese. All were African right down to their boots.
Eusébio was top scorer in the tournament, with nine goals. Arguably, Portugal should have won the World Cup for the first time in their history in 1966. The team suffered through a touch of home town favoritism from the organizers. The semi-final against England was supposed to have been played in Liverpool, but was switched by the English organizers to Wembley in London at the last minute—despite the fact that it had been agreed it was unfair to allow the home country to play all of its games at the national stadium. It meant Portugal had to travel down by train overnight.
“We didn’t get any sleep on the train. We were so tired when we got to London, we could hardly play,” Coluna once told me in the suburbs of Maputo.
Despite this, England won by a 2-1 whisker, with Eusébio scoring a penalty in reply.  Just imagine the indignation and weeks of headlines if a similar trick had been pulled in 2010.
Which brings me back to my point; when I read the other week that Eusébio had been ill in hospital in Lisbon, it occurred to me how little we hear of these former legends, while the television in the corner prattles on about other players not fit to lace their boots.
All of the Africans mentioned above made it when football was a game for men-of-men—hard men-of-men, for that matter. Coluna, who played 677 times for Benfica, showed me a huge, ugly scar below his right knee, a souvenir of a night in Rome in 1968 when an Italian defender crushed his ligaments. The referee didn’t even caution the defender, such was the violence of the game in those days.
“The doctor said I would never play again, but I knew better,” Coluna told me.
On top of that, most of these African soccer heroes lived lives steeped in the game. Coluna used to pinch his dad’s socks to make a ball to kick around the Maputo streets. His father, shopkeeper José Mário Esteves Coluna, was a goalkeeper and founder of Coluna’s team, Desportivo de Maputo. He died, from a heart attack, while watching his beloved club in 1959.
Coluna came back to Mozambique in 1975 and coached a small town club, Textafrica in Chimoio, for the country’s first ever championship in the newly independent nation. He served with distinction as a parliamentarian and football administrator. Benfica still sends him a pension in euros.
My point is that African footballers like these should be celebrated by the continent as a way to market the game and encourage the youth of the continent to excel in it. Their names and deeds should be used in advertisements, splashed over posters and plastered on the sides of buses.  Statues should be built and their names known the length and breadth of the continent.
When you have a compelling human interest story attached to a name like The Sacred Monster or Black Panther, who needs an advertising copywriter to write a catchy slogan to market the game?

Selling The Sacred Monster And Black Panther Should Be Easy

It is a blistering hot afternoon at a stadium in Johannesburg in 2025 and the sports commentator mops his brow before launching into his words at a rattling machine-gun pace.
“Ngobeni steals the ball off Bandisu. Ngobeni surges up field, past Mavuso… Passes to Klate, Klate to Phangiso. Phangiso scores! The crowd erupts. The cup is theirs, they’ve worked for it all season.
No, this is not the South African Premier Soccer League—it is merely a distant dream nurtured by those bringing Aussie Rules football to the African continent.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-large wp-image-408" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/4X3T8325-1024x684.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="317" />
Aussie Rules—a strange hybrid of rugby and Gaelic football—has been planted at the grassroots of South African sport, where a small bunch of enthusiasts hope it will flourish. It would be an achievement as the game—as Australian as ‘g’day’—rarely strays too far from its home in Melbourne, Victoria.
It all began when the Australian Football League (AFL) launched its ‘FootyWILD’ program in Africa in 2007. Four years later, there are 8,000 young South Africans playing the game, many as young as eight, plus 500 volunteers, coaches and umpires.
In a few short years, the home-grown stars are starting to shine. Bayanda Sobetwa is a 21-year-old from Khayelitsha near Cape Town, who has spent the past two seasons in Australia playing a level just below fully professional. Tsholbolko Moagi, also 21, from Johannesburg and Khaya Sikiti, 25, from Nyanga, spent the last season in Tasmania playing state league competition.
The organization is based in Potchefstroom at the country’s North West University—home to the North West Academy of Sport—which has hosted many international events from the Davis Cup to cricket. The well-equipped sports facility recognized Aussie Rules as one of its 11 sporting codes in 2002.
Operations manager for AFL South Africa, Joel Kelly, says the plan is to reach 30,000 players by 2013.
“We have had preliminary support from the private sector and the Australian government, who have been attracted to the unique role the AFL can play in the South African community and our position as a developing brand and game. Our focus, though, has been on building the base and strength of the asset in the early days to ensure we create a strong and sustainable platform for a variety of partners. As we continue to grow, we are confident we will deliver strong value for future partners,” he says.

Tag: Football Legaue

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Braveheart

Enchanting Signs That Something Special Is Happening

Kenya’s Football Revolution

Selling The Sacred Monster And Black Panther Should Be Easy

G’day Africa!