French football legend Thierry Henry was in South Africa to watch the 2019 UEFA Champions League final on television screens with dizzy fans.  



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A teaser campaign on Heineken South Africa’s Twitter page
unveiling the identity of a legendary footballer kicks off the 2019 season of
the UEFA Champions League. 



It certainly piques the attention of South African fans on
social media who tentatively await the unmasking of this legend – French
footballer Thierry Henry.&nbsp; 



Even as fans attempt to piece the mysterious mosaic, the
Champions League 100 club member is already making his way from Europe to watch
the much-anticipated UEFA Champions League tournament final on June 1, on a
giant television screen with his South African fans, at the Kyalami Grand Prix
Circuit race track in Johannesburg.



South Africa’s vibrant football culture finds expression in
all venues, from the dusty make-shift fields that continue to play a crucial
role in community life in townships, to the manicured green pitches of
gargantuan stadiums. 



As Tottenham Hotspur FC and Liverpool FC take to the field
for the final leg in Spain, here in Johannesburg, all eyes are on Henry, who
can barely focus with all the attention on him. But these are interactions the
former FC Barcelona and Arsenal FC striker would not trade for anything else –
even watching the match in the comfort of his own home. 



“It is always nice to have these moments with South African
fans. Usually, I would be at home watching the game, but now, I am in South
Africa. It is a bit surreal to watch the Champions League that happens in
Europe, in Africa,” he tells FORBES AFRICA.&nbsp;




Watching the all-English final on South African soil evoked
nostalgia, and Henry reminisces the beginning of an illustrious career in
football.&nbsp; 



“I went to Monaco [to play] as a youngster; that was the
choice. I didn’t know we were going to make the Champions League. I was just
trying to be a football player,” he says.



&nbsp;Henry then moved to
Arsenal, and then Barcelona where he ended up winning the Champions League. 



The bulk of the retired footballer’s career as a player was
in the English Premier League for Arsenal FC that saw him as Arsenal’s all-time
top scorer, with 228 goals, for the club. 



“The moves were based on competing, trying to get the best
out of myself and get the best out of my teammates,” he says. 



Despite a two-nil loss on Henry’s first professional
appearance for Monaco in 1994, first impressions should make a lasting impact,
he says.&nbsp; 



“For me, it is always the first game, it is very important
because you are now on the scene and you need to make sure that everybody can
see what you are about in that particular moment. I remember losing the first
game but I had an impact and the rest is history.”



On June 1, Liverpool FC was crowned champions in the 64th
season of the premier football tournament. 



The win for the English team meant more beer, selfies and
snapshots with Henry for the few lucky South African soccer fans, and again,
the rest is history.&nbsp;

Thierry Henry

Football, Beer And Selfies With Thierry Henry

Borussia Dortmund and FC Bayern Munich—these two German Bundesliga clubs surprised many by making it an all-German final at the UEFA Champions League at Wembley in May.
Bayern has reached the final three times in four years. On the other side of the coin, Dortmund embodies the change in Germany that is making this footballing nation great again.
With a little help from the directors of Dortmund’s youth team, manager Jürgen Klopp has hand-crafted a great team. Dortmund have shown that with the right people in place, sustainable success is possible. Klopp has nurtured rising talent, showing that spending lots of money is not the be-all and end-all of professional football.
The youth academy of FC Barcelona, La Masia, has more than 300 young players. It has been praised, since it opened in 2002, for being one of the best in the world. La Masia has been cited as a factor, not only in FC Barcelona’s European success, but also in Spain winning the FIFA World Cup in 2010. It trained all three finalists for the Ballon d’Or award in the same year: Andrés Iniesta; Lionel Messi and Xavi Hernández. The club scouted Messi in Argentina and signed him when he was 13.
The question of how clubs in Africa can do the same is a complex one. African players are sought-after. Every year, they sign for clubs in England, Spain, Italy and Germany.
African players are prized for their flair and physical attributes, but have been criticized in the past, in a broad generalization, that they do not possess the technique of players from Europe. That is something that can be taught, but the general feeling is that it should be done from an early age.
It is for that reason that many European clubs now have some sort of academy set-up in Africa; be it their own facility, or in partnership with an African club. This allows them to uncover gems from the age of six and nurture them through their teens with a view to transfer them to a European academy at the age of 16.
It is a long-term investment that bears little fruit. Only one in 10 players end up in Europe—a number that varies from country to country. This process has received both praise and criticism. The praise is for the opportunities it gives young footballers through professional careers in Europe. The criticism: it is seen as a depletion of Africa’s scarce resources in return for little.
The reality is that these academies do not come cheap. Most clubs in Africa cannot afford a truly professional academy set-up, with world-class training facilities and coaches, without the patronage of a team in Europe. Any amount of money and expertize is good for the African game.
The success of African clubs, in setting up their own structures, has been limited; it has come more by fluke than design.
Perhaps the greatest example is the Asec Abidjan Academy in Cote d’Ivoire that produced a golden generation of stars. The academy is known as the crown jewel of African football. It was founded by Roger Ouégnin and Frenchman Jean-Marc Guillou 20 years ago.
The two saw enormous natural talent among the club’s youngsters, but little tuition outside of football. The students at the academy are given a football education, and are also taught maths, history, geography, physics, French, English and Spanish.
The students live in dorms during the week and have two training sessions a day, while getting top-notch medical care. Graduates include Bonaventure Kalou; Didier Zokora; Emmanuel Eboué; Gervinho Kouassi; Salomon Kalou, Koffi N’dri, known as Romaric, Didier Ya Konan, and the Touré brothers, Yaya and Kolo.
It has been an enormous success and continues to develop top players with a simple recipe—bring structure and organization to the lives of these youngsters, then let their natural talent shine.
The question of why there are not many more such successful set-ups around the continent probably comes down, largely, to money. There certainly is a fair share of fantastic institutions, but financial issues aside, it is also a matter of the desire from club owners and consistency in what you are trying to achieve.
You cannot have a top program for two years, then let standards slip. It is also a question of expertise in some parts of the continent; football is a universal language that can be taught easily.
Running a professional academy is a huge undertaking and requires skills that go far beyond the football pitch. These are not always readily available—certainly at a cost that makes them affordable—and as with any business, an academy will live or die by virtue of the people running it. There is no quick route to success, you have to be in it for the long haul.
If you look at Ajax Amsterdam’s association with Ajax Cape Town in South Africa, that is now 14 years old, it has unearthed only two players—Steven Pienaar and Thulani Serero. Despite this, Ajax remains committed, for the moment, because there is always the promise of another Pienaar. It is this long-term thinking that needs to apply.
With Zambia, whenever the Chipolopolo camp is in Johannesburg, they always play practice games against a South African Youth Academy called Africa Sport that is run by former Bafana player Harold Legodi. He is doing a great job and has gathered real talent.
It’s always encouraging to see players being groomed. Chipolopolo have played with them four or five times and it is heartening to see skill that surely should lead to a bright future.
If you open an academy tomorrow and start with players at under-7 level, it may take you a decade before you get your first professional player. It is a long-term investment for which few have the patience.
We need more academies on the continent but we need good ones. That will be the key to growing the game in Africa.

Wanted: Entrepreneurs With Deep Pockets And Patience

When meeting Benni McCarthy for the first time, it is hard not to size him up. Firstly, he is larger than life and says what is on his mind. Secondly, his size has been open to cruel national debate.
Benni McCarthy’s weight has been the staple of comedians, talk shows and Monday morning office gossip along the lines of Benni in a cafeteria rather than the 18-yard area.
“I am now finding it easy to stay in shape,” he says. “The weight issue really came up when I was living and playing in Europe and experimenting with all kinds of food that was new to me. Most of it clearly didn’t agree with my metabolic system, which resulted in me packing on the pounds, but now I know what works and that is how I’m keeping the excess weight off,” he continues.
By now it has become clear that McCarthy lives his life as an open book. I had expected the weight question to go down like a triple cheeseburger—which it didn’t, and next he was taking us on a tour of his Parkwood mansion and making jokes about his current team’s coach and ruminating about his future.
“I think that I am fitting in well at Orlando Pirates. For me, coming back home was not necessarily because I had no other options—it was mostly for the purpose of giving back to the community that made me the international star that I became,” he says of his 14-year spell in international soccer.
“I am finding the level of discipline with the players to be of a lower quality here than at the clubs in Europe, though, and most times you find that a lot of players aren’t as dedicated or as excited to be on the field representing the country’s biggest teams. But the pace of the game and all the other technical elements are up there with the best worldwide,” he says.
McCarthy is the only South African football player to ever win the UEFA Champion’s League. His former team, FC Porto, won in 2004, thanks to his 20 goals in 23 matches, plus a golden hat-trick in the final. McCarthy had a strange career at Porto. He scored in 11 matches for FC Porto in 2002 and left them only because the club could no longer afford him. They bought him back for €8 million ($10.5 million) a year later and McCarthy went on to win the UEFA Golden Boot.
Besides his uncanny ability to find the back of the net, McCarthy’s list of achievements would make even the most jaded critic realize that he is the real deal. He was the first soccer player in the world to feature on the cover of TIME magazine; he still holds the record of international goals by a South African and is Bafana Bafana’s all-time top scorer with 31 goals for his country.
McCarthy’s time spent in Europe wasn’t all roses. As he reminisces, he tells a chilling tale of rabid racism among Spanish supporters.
“For quite a while, my skin color became the bane of my existence. There were times when some fans would throw banana peels onto the stadium as I went in, and I still remember very vividly how they used to also make monkey sounds when I walked onto the pitch,” says McCarthy.
After enduring the hatred for months, McCarthy came up with a technique to block out all the hatred.
“Whenever I would encounter racism off the field, I would always take out a wad of cash and either burn it or tear it up right in front of the perpetrators. That was my way of rubbing it into their faces: you hate me, yet you still come to my games, effectively making me richer,” McCarthy quips.
McCarthy does have money to burn. His home drips with it.
“Growing up in Hanover Park in the Cape Flats of Cape Town, I never knew that it was possible that I could achieve so much, and make the kind of money that I made just by kicking a ball around. I know what it is to be poor, and the fact that I do not want to return to that has made me very wise in the way I handle my finances,” explains McCarthy.
“There are too many stories about ex-footballers going back home and becoming dead broke. I understand the reason behind why that happens: you go overseas as a teenager, get access to more money than you ever thought possible in a very short time and it gets to your head. It also becomes very hard to resist the lure of the football star’s lifestyle, which famously entails hard partying, bling and lots of beautiful women with expensive tastes. Add to that the bad friends that surround you and the fact that there isn’t much financial education that was given to you before you found yourself in that position,” he says.
McCarthy maintains that his family, which consists of his mother, three daughters, a steady girlfriend from Scotland and a baby on the way, have kept him focused on making financial decisions that will ensure that everyone gets to keep the lifestyle that he has worked for.
“I have six properties in Europe, a couple of houses in Cape Town and Johannesburg, and I am in the process of starting a business as a property developer—focusing on building luxury apartments for the growing middle class,” he says.
The Maserati and Bentley parked in the front drive shows McCarthy isn’t always parsimonious.
“You know how it is with us guys and how we love our toys… I do admit that I have a serious weakness for sports cars, and I am a keen collector of top-of-the-range watches… so basically, I collect houses, sports cars and Rolexes,” he gushes.
If the rumor that he earns around R500,000 ($64,000) a month at Orlando Pirates is true, then McCarthy doesn’t have much to worry about.
“I hope to play for one or two more seasons, then retire from football for good. I have been very fortunate in that my career hasn’t been marred by injury or anything that I can’t handle, so I look forward to one day being on the level of my all-time icon, Jomo Sono,” he says.
Benni McCarthy may have come a long way from his roots in the Cape Flats, but he has not forgotten his roots or the ball artistry of one of his illustrious predecessors. Legend has it that Jomo Sono left his wedding reception to take the field for Pirates, who were losing, to score goals for victory. Surely, McCarthy would have done the same.

Tag: UEFA Champions League

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I Rubbed Money In The Face Of Racist Hate