Where Is The Love? Africa May Never Warmly Embrace Manchester City

Each season, the Premier League power circle seems to get a bit bigger, with the velvet ropes being pushed farther to widen the VIP area and accommodate an ever-expanding elite clientèle.

In a short while, we’ve gone from having a ‘Top Four’ to a ‘Fab Five’, a ‘Super Six’ and — during Leicester City’s stunning 2015/16 conquest — even a ‘Seventh Heaven’ briefly.

The Premier League, though slightly trimmed from the 22-club format which graced its inception 26 years ago, is a much bigger place now — at least for the big boys. The gulf between the league’s top six clubs (okay, Leicester, here’s where you get off) and the rest of the field is perhaps at its widest when the championship is cast within the borders of Africa, the world’s second largest and arguably most Prem-obsessed continent.

Manchester United — who haven’t had many renowned African stars in their history, by the way — appear to rule the realm, courtesy their irresistible brand appeal, but the competition is quickly catching up with some shrewd pieces of business, especially in the transfer market.

Chelsea’s original golden generation in the noughties, under the patronage of Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, had Africans at its core, and it’s unsurprising that in Ghana (homeland of Michael Essien), Cote d’Ivoire (Didier Drogba and Salomon Kalou) and Nigeria (John Obi Mikel) the Blues remain a pretty big deal, even though Africa’s influence on the club’s fortunes has waned somewhat in recent years.

That trail, though, was blazed by Arsenal, long before it appealed to their cross-city rivals, when the Gunners recruited and utilized the likes of Nwankwo Kanu, Lauren Etame-Mayer and Kolo Toure to stunning effect during Arsene Wenger’s more memorable years, with the likes of Emmanuel Eboue, Emmanuel Adebayor and Alex Song lighting up the Emirates Stadium even when things went inexorably south in the closing chapters of the Frenchman’s long reign.

Liverpool are the latest in line, bringing in prime African talent for three seasons running — Sadio Mane in 2016, Mohamed Salah in 2017, and Naby Keita this summer — for a combined sum of over £120 million. Salah’s exploits for the Reds last season has since made them the trending club of choice for many Africans, while Mane helped advance Anfield’s interests in his native Senegal in no small way with his own bright displays, coupled with a brilliant move to send Liverpool shirts back home to whip up support ahead of May’s Uefa Champions League final.

Oh, Keita?
Well, if he lives up to his vast potential and the weight of expectation that greeted his arrival on Merseyside last month, the Guinean maestro would only grow the flourishing romance Liverpool now enjoys with Africa.

Tottenham Hotspur follows, though quite distant, holding on to the Kenyan goodwill having Vincent Wanyama around brings them. ‘Big Vic’ is his nation’s biggest export yet, and Spurs would gladly take whatever favour that earns them among the midfield gem’s football-loving countrymen.

For the sixth member of English football’s current ruling class, though, there isn’t much African affection to savour just yet — and there never might be.

It’s been a decade since that club, Manchester City, waved goodbye to their yo-yo days and assumed a nouveau riche lifestyle. That new-found appeal and accompanying fat purse has lured quality African talent, among some of the best players money can buy, to the Etihad Stadium, while the City Football Group (CFG) — the global sporting behemoth under whose wide umbrella City’s makeover and development into a ‘super club’ continues – stretches its tentacles all over the game.

Four of the Africans who’ve settled at Eastlands in that period have broken the continent’s transfer record (in the sphere of European business), with the newest, £60m-priced Riyad Mahrez, arriving for more than double what City themselves had paid for Ivorian Wilfred Bony in 2015. Of the lot, though, only Yaya Toure, a compatriot of Bony’s purchased from Barcelona in summer of 2010, provided value for money.

In the eight years that followed, City quickly piled up silverware, with the midfielder instrumental in the majority of those triumphs. It’s why Toure, in City’s modern history, is deemed legendary, a status reflected in the glamorous farewell he was handed at the end of last season, but the latter years of his career at the club won’t be remembered too fondly by the player.

The 2016 advent of Pep Guardiola, the manager on whose watch Toure departed the Camp Nou all those years ago, signaled the end of the 35-year-old’s spell of bliss at City, and even though the process dragged on, it eventually came to a finale in May 2018, albeit one staged to look far merrier than it had threatened to be. Toure lashed out at Guardiola afterwards, nevertheless, stopping short of tagging the Catalan racist, with his agent, the outspoken Dimitry Seluk, adding that Guardiola’s supposed maltreatment of his client has “many African fans turned away from Manchester City.”

As a four-time African Player of the Year, Toure’s opinions — however absurd and petty they might seem to the rest of the world — do matter in these parts, and while Guardiola’s association with City lasts, Africans may never really hold the Citizens in high esteem, even if they win many more Premier League titles in the stunning fashion they claimed the last.

That reputation isn’t helped by the largely forgettable experiences endured by other high-profile Africans in City’s recent past: Emmanuel Adebayor’s arrival at the club was steeped in as much controversy as his exit with very little of note occurring in-between, Bony’s City flight never quite took off after all the fuss that marked his grand entry, young Kelechi Iheanacho started off well as arguably Africa’s most dazzling prospect of his age but has since been sacrificed on the altar of Guardiola’s philosophy, while Kolo Toure — Yaya’s elder brother — had a career at City which was dwarfed by a far more distinguished story with Arsenal.

The picture is even less impressive when one considers the fact that, of the planet’s major continents, Africa is the only one where CFG administers no club, currently limiting its dealings to partnerships with a Ghanaian academy and the Ghana Football Association.

I t’s an itch so bad that City — and Guardiola – may have had to bend over backwards in trying to scratch, paying more for Mahrez than they’d ever done for a footballer. The extent to which Mahrez, a former Premier League winner himself with Leicester, repays all that faith is still to be determined, but his new employers would certainly be counting on him. However things turn out, though, there is little guarantee that City’s freshest marquee signing would secure new African fans or that all those the love of Mahrez converted to Leicester faithful would transfer their allegiance en masse to their Algerian idol’s new club. No, not even City’s relationships with QNET, Tecno and PZ Cussons — partners with thriving interests in Africa – appear to hold the key to increasing the club’s share of the African market.

What does, then?
Well, it’s hard to tell, but expect little to change anytime soon.

City, despite their latter-day successes, may still be a long way off from boasting a trophy cabinet as well-stocked as those of their fellow English heavyweights, but the battle to win African hearts in the manner achieved by their competitors remains tougher still – possibly their toughest yet.