INVESTMENT IN AFRICA

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"For the past few years big names including Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase of the US, have been popping up in places such as newly oil-rich Ghana.

"In London, Helios Investment Partners, an investment firm founded by young Nigerians, is poised to close subscriptions to a $900m fund, so far the largest private equity fundraising exercise to target Africa.

"This comes as the much bigger Carlyle Group of the US is backing the continent for the first time, setting up in South Africa and Nigeria – the two biggest economies south of the Sahara."

Ripe for reappraisal‎ - Financial Times

"Growth has been spurred by market liberalisation and improved public management of finances as well as a boom in the commodities that Africa has in abundance.

"Perhaps the biggest factor has been the engagement of emerging powers including India and Brazil but led by China."

Ripe for reappraisal‎ - Financial Times

~~

LIBYAN ATROCITIES

Belgian UN troops admit to roasting a Somali boy

The CIA's coup in Libya is all about stealing oil.

And helping the arms trade and Wall Street.

And removing Chinese influence.

And giving the USA control of North Africa.

On 9 March 2011,at Global Research, Professor Michel Chossudovsky has an article entitled "Operation Libya" and the Battle for Oil: Redrawing the Map of Africa

Among the points made:

1. Libya has the largest oil reserves in Africa.

The idea behind the US-NATO coup is to control that oil.

And take over Libya's National Oil Corporation.

2. And help the weapons producers.

3. And remove Chinese influence.

China plays a central role in the Libyan oil industry.

The UK's Clegg and Cameron seem to support the CIA coups.

4. And help Wall Street.

Billions of dollars of Libyan financial assets, deposited in Western banks, are to be conficated.

5. And give the USA control of North Africa.

This means weakening French links to Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria; and other parts of Africa such as Niger and Chad.

And weakening Italian links to Libya.

Victims of the Belgians

How do Europeans behave in Africa?

A Belgian officer described a raid to punish a Congolese village that had protested against Belgian actions.

The white officer in command: "ordered us to cut off the heads of the men and hang them on the village palisades, also their sexual members, and to hang the women and the children on the palisade in the form of a cross." (Mass crimes against humanity in the Congo Free State)

It's not Libya that has murdered up to two million Iraqis.

Gaddafi wants an international fact-finding team to visit Libya to investigate alleged atrocities committed during the present troubles. (Tripoli calls for atrocities inquiry)

~~~~~

Football Charity Liberia

Teams4U ran its first football-based project in Liberia in November, working in partnership with Samaritan's Purse. The focus of the trip was to work with young people in the three principle cities, namely the capital Monrovia, as well as Buchanan and Gbarnga. The programme was supported by two leading English Premiership football clubs, Liverpool and Newcastle United.

A dozen British coaches travelled to Monrovia, where the ten-day football tour was launched. The objective was to meet the needs of the youth of Liberia, illustrating compassion and warmth to deprived youngsters, whilst instilling a message driven to facilitate both the empowering enhancement of skills as well as character development.

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Al Ahly v Internacional

Al Ahly Cairo 1-2 Internacional

Brazil's Libertadores Cup winners Internacional squeezed by Egypt's African champions Al Ahly Cairo 2-1 at Tokyo's National Stadium tonight.

19-year-old substitute striker Luiz Adriano's first professional goal booked Internacional's place in the final of the Fifa Club World Championship in Yokohama on Sunday where they will face Europe's Champions League winners Barcelona from Spain or Mexico's Club America.

Youngster Pato Alexandre put Internacional ahead in the 23rd minute of the first half from a corner before Angolan striker Flavio equalized after the break in the 54th minute for Al Ahly.

Both sides hit the post in a lively encounter, before Luiz Adriano, on for room-mate Pato Alexandre, who was taken off with an ankle injury, sealed the match for Internacional.

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Panorama Bungs Scandal

Another Pyrrhic Victory? - Panorama "Bungs Scandal"

The BBC thought they had scored a hit with their recent documentary supposedly exposing the kickbacks involved in English football but was it the opening salvo of hope in the fight to reclaim the Beautiful Game or just another blank being fired?

The Panorama documentary "Football's Dirty Secrets" was much billed in the national press as the exposé that would lift the lid on a can of worms that is Premiership football and precipitate a major clean sweep of the top division with some top-level casualties along the way.

While it was alarming to realize just how ingrained the tradition of managers seeking to cream off a percentage of a transfer fee is now, thanks to the connivance of unscrupulous agents, what was revealed really ought not to surprise us one jot.

After all, Arsenal's George Graham was forced to resign back in 1995 after it was revealed he had profited to the tune of £425,000 from transfer dealings involving a bent Norwegian player representative called Rune Hauge.

Fast forward eleven years and we are still dealing with exactly the same issue; in this case Bolton Wanderers' boss Sam Allardyce accused of pocketing pounds on transfer fees with his son as the broker [Allardyce has claimed he is "utterly innocent" of any wrong-doing and is planning to sue the BBC].

Harry Redknapp, the alleged prince of bungs, had expected to be shot to pieces by the Panorama programme and had issued a pre-emptive statement in the press, but he need not have worried as his involvement in the documentary was limited to expressing interest in signing a player under contract elsewhere.

Alas, the latest exposé of wrongdoing will fail to clean up the game unless powers from beyond football intervene to enforce the law. Football has shown itself to be spectacularly incapable of policing itself so many times before and has operated more like a private betting syndicate in the back of a pub than an open and above board industry that involves millions of participants and 360-degree media coverage.

Let anyone complacent about the morality of the sport merely take a look beyond Italy's fourth World Cup triumph in 2006 at the astonishing scandal that engulfed their domestic game in the run-up to the tournament.

Now soccer is a multi-billion pound global business, it behoves governments to treat it as such and apply the laws that are enforced on similar concerns.

This entails not only scanning the industry for under the table payments but also enforcing competition laws which would place restrictions on the amount of money any club can spend on wages and possibly the number of foreign players they can employ. If it means the European Union, via UEFA, must impose a salary cap across the continent, then what are we waiting for - ten consecutive Premiership titles for Chelsea?

Regulation of this out-of-control wildfire is ever more pressing now clubs in the English top division are being snapped up by random international venture capitalists, who often unashamedly admit to having no roots or interest in the game, in a 21st century version of the Scramble for Africa in the 1800s.

Talking of Africa, the protracted battle over Nigerian Jon Obi Mikkel's signature, an unseemly squabble eventually won by Chelsea over Malcolm Glazer's Manchester United plc, saw Rune Hauge's name surface again after all these years, still working as an agent and still apparently tricking his way in a fight for a slice of the cake (Hauge was one of several agents who claimed to represent Mikkel)!

Another young African, Freddy Adu, in the news ever since he debuted in Major League Soccer aged 14, has reportedly been the target of Reading FC this week. That a player aged 17, with no national team caps or European Union passport could even be considered for a work permit in the UK speaks volumes of football's sell-out to the morality of the free market.

There is a school of thought that says this is all a storm in a teacup, that fans simply do not care what happens to their gate money as long as there is a team to cheer about on the field and who appear to be playing for the shirt.

How anyone can entertain thoughts of player loyalty in 2006 is ridiculous enough, but there is some mileage in the apathy of fans in the face of exploitation, which allowed characters like Newcastle directors Freddy Shepherd and Douglas Hall, in 1998, to laugh at fans forking out a fortune for polyester replica shirts.

In Newcastle's case, the fans must shoulder some blame for turning out in such huge numbers and buying so much merchandise no matter how unscrupulous or inept the owners have been.

Boycotting a product is one way to punish its makers, but in the case of the "Geordie Nation' amongst others, this course of action is unrealistic.

I attended Arsenal's first home game after George Graham's stunning resignation in February 1995, and watched as the home fans really took exception to the traveling Nottingham Forest supporters taunting them about their corrupt former employee.

The Gunners' fans had enjoyed such a golden age under Graham they were prepared to turn a blind eye to his creative accounting with their money.

So where do we go from here? The FA have announced yet another enquiry in the wake of the Panorama programme, but no one with more than a toe in reality thinks that will solve anything.

Until governments realize there are no votes to be lost in interfering with a popular public pursuit, the solutions lie elsewhere. More football chairmen like the outspoken Simon Jordan would help. No one has tried harder than the Crystal Palace boss to fight back against agents' hijacking of player loyalties, to the extent that Jordan has refused point blank to deal with them:

"I see so many of them happy to sow division if it means they get a better deal, often working against the interests of clubs, players and supporters - and yet the game still opens its arms and embraces them," he told The Observer in 2005.

The other source of hope could be an unlikely one: FIFA President Sepp Blatter. Whereas his predecessor, ‘the great dictator' Joao Havelange, happily encouraged all manner of commercialism and profiteering in the Beautiful Game, Blatter is increasingly critical of the mishandling of the sport by unregulated markets.

While he is still in many ways the man with "50 ideas a day, 51 of which are bad," such as enlarged goals or women players wearing skimpy outfits, the Swiss soccer chief may yet surprise us with a decision from the heart that will help stop the commercial rotting of the game.

Make no mistake, with the top Premiership teams fielding eleven foreigners with a foreign coach and foreign owners swanning in to buy up the ‘franchise' for marketing or vanity purposes, we are living in strange days in football's history.

As Simon Jordan aptly put it, "This isn't the real world - it's a banana republic. And if people in the game can't see that - and think things can't get any better, fairer or more decent - God help us."

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Korean Coach's World Cup Thoughts

After two spells as “number three”, Afshin Ghotbi has returned for a third term in South Korea. This time however, he is the second-in-command behind new head coach Pim Verbeek.

The faces may be familiar but the situation is not. There is no longer a World Cup on the horizon but rather a chance to build a team from scratch, to lay the foundations of a healthy national set-up.

That future may be starting right now with qualification for the 2007 Asian Cup and upcoming games with Iran and Taiwan to think about but the recent World Cup, Ghotbi’s second with Korea and third overall, is still fresh in everyone’s minds. The resident of Southern California was in the thick of the action during those three intense games against Togo, France and Switzerland that ultimately ended with the Taeguk Warriors narrowly failing to progress to the second round.

The 42 year-old remembers the events of Germany well.” We set a goal of four or five points which we thought was achievable… When you look at it objectively and take all your emotions out of it, we showed well. But you can’t go to a World Cup into a tough group and concede a goal in each first half of the three games and expect to get out of the group.”

A win against Togo in the opening game was an historic first in an overseas World Cup though some parts of the Korean press, and the neutral spectators in Frankfurt, weren’t impressed with the way the team chose to defend its narrow 2-1 lead against the ten-man African team – spending the last minutes of the game choosing to keep the ball rather than attack.

Ghotbi is unrepentant and insists all the staff would do the same again. “Togo was dangerous from the beginning to the end in attack. We had to get three points from that game. Korea had never won a game in a World Cup abroad. Psychologically, those three points were so important.”

The team and fans then moved east to Leipzig and a date with eventual runners-up France. After spending much of the game on the back foot, the Asian team grabbed a 1-1 draw courtesy of a late Park Ji-sung equalizer.

“For us to get one point from that game was a great achievement,” Ghotbi recalls. “ They had some of the best players in the world – champions of great teams in the most important leagues in the world.”

That night in the Saxony city, the parties continued into the night as the 2002 semi-finalists looked set for the second round but the dream disappeared on a steamy Hanover evening and a 2-0 victory for Switzerland. The second goal came in controversial circumstances - with the majority of Korean fans and players believing the goal should never have counted – the new number two agrees.

“In my opinion, their second goal was offside and that really broke our back. In a game like that you need balls to bounce your way and they didn’t and you need calls to go your way. But we lost to a good team.”

Earning such a label for South Korea is what the coaching staff is planning to do. Ghotbi is an experienced analyst and knows the problems that need to be ironed out.

“Our final pass was poor, we needed too many chances to score goals, the backline has to play better football and we were not capable of it.”

In his third spell with the national team and a stint with K-League powerhouses Suwon Samsung Bluewings, Ghotbi knows the domestic set-up as well as any outsider. He points to a league that isn’t of the highest standard, overseas-based players that spend most of their time on the bench and Korea’s tendency to hype young, promising players as problems that need to be solved.

With a two year contract in place, there is a chance for Ghotbi to assist Verbeek in doing just that. During August the buzzword heard on the training pitch and in press conferences has been “intelligence”.

“I think the most important thing is we need to identify players who have a football brain and find a way to combine that with the fighting spirit of Korean players, the physical qualities, the pace and the energy.”

“The objectives are simple: Be number one in Asia by 2007, try to reach the last six or eight in the Olympics and then be in a position to go to the second round of the next World Cup.”

While the aims have been clearly set there is much work to be done to achieve them. Ghotbi has often talked about improving the domestic league, a subject that is receiving more and more column inches in the Korean press.

The K-League is not in a dire a state as some of the more excitable dailies would have one believe but it is clear that standards need to be raised on and off the pitch and not just for the sake of the national team. To that end, better communication with the domestic coaches is necessary – a relationship that would be two-way but Ghotbi knows what he would like to tell the K-League bosses.

“On the practical side, too many teams play defensively, too many of them play –and I don’t want to offend anybody -noodle football. There’s running everywhere, there’s a lot of energy, a lot of fight but very little organization.

“The K-League teams need to look at trends in international football – the ways of playing and the ways of training around the world - shorter training, more quality -more tactical, less running, running, running. We need football players, we don’t need just athletes.”

Copyright © John Duerden and Soccerphile.com

Premiership: Addicks tie the Baggies

Both Charlton and West Brom came away from their Premiership clash at the Valley unbeaten but dissatisfied with the outcome.

In a closely fought 0:0 draw, the home side missed the opportunity to further their revival and enter the top half of the Premiership while West Brom, despite gaining a point, stay a perilous four points and one place above the relegation zone they so narrowly avoided last season.

The Addicks had come into the clash breathing more easily on a back of one loss in their last six following their miserable autumn while West Brom had more need of points, with their confidence freshly wounded by giving 3 pts to the hapless Sunderland in their last game at the Hawthorns.

The first stirrings on a freezing night in South East London came with speculative 35 yard efforts from Junichi Inamoto and Hermain Hreidarsson in the 6th and 7th minutes.

Charlton edged nearer to the scoresheet in the 11th minute when Marcus Bent set up Darren Ambrose for a shot from the edge of the D that Tomasz Kuszczak caught.

Then four minutes later Darren Ambrose curled over a free kick from the left that missed a host of his teammates by only inches to the howls of the home fans.

Alan Curbushley’s side might have been favourites going into the game but in the opening spell struggled to put three passes together and there was a dearth of final balls for the two Bents upfront, who despite sharing the same name and having played together at Ipswich Town, seemed to have some way to go in terms of developing an understanding, Marcus often flicking on while Darren ran in the opposite direction.

West Brom seemed a little overawed although Jonathan Greening did fire a warning sign across Charlton’s bows in the 25th minute when Thomas Myhre tipped his long range effort away for a corner.

Around the half hour mark Charlton roared back into life with a trio of chances over a four minute spell, the first arriving in the 28th minute when Darren Bent muscled past center back Curtis Davies in search of a loose ball and steered his shot narrowly wide of the goal.

Two minutes later the corner flag became Charlton’s 12th man providing a fortuitous assist for Darren Bent to create another scoring opportunity.

The Charlton striker chased a misplaced through ball into the corner but as Davies obstructed him and tried to let it run out of play, the ball rebounded off the flagpole allowing Bent to charge in on goal and pull the trigger, Kuszczak stopping a goal with his legs.

Lastly Alexi Smertin made a 20 yard diagonal run clear of Inamoto but his aim was two yards off target.

Five minutes before the interval West Brom were cursing their luck as the enterprising Jonathan Greening out on the left whipped in a dangerous diagonal pass to the far post where Geoff Horsfield had ghosted in to challenge Thomas Myhre.

The Norwegian could only push it against the post and the ball bounced across the face of the open goal, Hreidarsson scrambling to clear before it could trickle over the line.

Horsfield threatened again a minute before half time when he stumbled through the box and somehow got a shot off that ended up a couple of yards wide of goal.

Four minutes after the restart Smertin danced around the edge of box but unleashed his resulting shot too high to trouble Kuszczak.

Charlton continued to trouble their visitors without converting their possession, Bryan Hughes adding his name to Charlton’s goal attempts with a 20-yard blast in the 56th that Kuszczak dived to parry and a header over the bar from the resulting corner.

On the hour mark Radostin Kishishev sent a snap pass forward to a streaking Darren Bent, whose diagonal cross to Marcus Bent zipped between him and Kuszczak.

Ten minutes later Chris Powell fed Ambrose on the left hand edge of box and the Charlton midfielder wheeled through 360 degrees before firing but his on target effort failed to beat West Brom’s Polish guardian.

When Ambrose was substituted in the 73rd minute for Jerome Thomas, there were boos at the withdrawing of a player well liked by the home fans.

Marcus Bent’s home Premiership debut continued its uneventful course, although he perhaps should have won a penalty in the 76th when Neil Clement brought him down in the box as they went for the same ball.

A score looked increasingly unlikely from either team and in the 80th minute the last chance of note arrived, Bryan Hughes latching on to a weak clearance from Kuszczak, one of a number he made on the night and slipping it quickly to Darren Bent, who found himself in the middle of the box with a clear sight of goal.

Baggies defender Curtis Davies however was Johnny on the spot and his split-second tackle stole the ball from Bent as he cocked his leg to shoot.

Bryan Robson stayed in the dug out while Curbishley and assistant Keith Peacock stood together, deep in conversation but with no real options remaining.

Jay Bothroyd came on for the ineffectual Marcus Bent but failed to make an impact while tricky winger Jerome Thomas found himself alternately fouled or too starved of supply to make an impact.

Post match Addicks boss Alan Curbishley hailed a battling performance for eking out a result:
"It was a tough old game for us,” he told reporters. “West Brom came out of the blocks and looked sharp early on and we had to work our way back into the match.

West Brom’s Bryan Robson also took positives out of the 0:0 draw:
"We are down to the bare minimum with injuries, suspensions and the players away at the African Cup of Nations,” he said, adding “ If they keep performing like that I'm confident we will stay up.”

Soccerphile spoke to celebrity Charlton fan Michael Grade CBE after the game and the former Chief Executive of Channel 4 and Controller of BBC1, now Charlton director, admitted West Brom had got their pressing tactics right.

“I thought West Bromwich came to spoil the game and they did it very effectively,” he commented. “I thought we battled but they did not give us a minute on the ball and we did not know how to handle it. We missed a couple of chances and they missed a couple of chances so I thought it was a fair result in the end.”

On a brighter note he added, “We are still in the Cup and the confidence is beginning to come back. I can remember games like that when we would have ended up losing 1-0 or 2-0.”

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