Blocking African players from representing their countries seems racist

The two weeks international break is done and dusted and many players of different nationality have travelled down to their different countrysides to play their bit and also returned back to their club side. With the European countries playing the euro 2020 qualifiers, African teams are also preparing for their nations cup tournament.

As expected, all players called upon by one country are expected to show up and represent their teams to the best of their ability. A strange occurrence has been on the rise lately as numerous European clubs are blocking their African stars from representing their countries. Most clubs have cited COVID -19 as the major reason for coming to this conclusion.

With due respect to all European teams, I find this insulting and could go all out and term it racist because other players who are Europeans and Americans were all allowed to represent their countries. That also resulted in Inter Milan and African legend Samuel Eto rubbishing the decision made by Inter to block Achraf Hakimi from representing Morroco.

He was of the opinion that if he was the president of African football, he won't allow that because it makes the African tournament looks lesser compared to other tournaments. It should be recalled that despite Italy having the highest rate of death from covid a while ago, the world was still opened to them and they still play football.

In that regard, I find this stance by the inter Milan management absurd and unacceptable. Why wasn’t the covid issue brought out while sending other players from other continents to their respective countries to represents their country? Was inter trying to say that the Africa nations qualifier was not significant or that Africa has the highest confirmed cases of Covid and so to protect the players, they shouldn’t go.

No logical explanation could make sense to me in this instance as firstly, all continents have a greater percentage of confirmed cases when compared to that of Africa. Using this statistic, then the blocking of African players not to play for their countries should not even come up.

Although this is not a new occurrence as I have witnessed occurrences similar to that of Achraf Hakimi. I could remember a time when Mourinho gave Moses an ultimatum of either staying and training with the rest of the squad of risks being pulled off from his plans if he represents Nigeria in the AFCON cup.

Moses represented Nigeria in the tournament and was frozen out of Chelsea by Mourinho. This didn’t hurt Moses one bit has Nigeria strike gold at the tournament and it wasn’t long Mourinho was sacked by Chelsea and replaced by Conte. Moses played the best of his football under Conte.

They have been many cases like this in recent times but that of Achraf Hakimi is the latest high profile case recorded and it's unacceptable. It shows a lack of professionalism by Inter Milan and also it shows that the AFCON is not been respected and that’s a slap to all Africa teams.

The qualifiers are on break for now but more cases such as this are expected to happen In the coming weeks. More drastic action is supposed to be in place to ensure cases such as this never happens again as it shows a lack of disrespect. If I was to be the CAF president, I will put measures such as ensuring that players who don’t heed to country invite wouldn’t represent their country in any tournament.

That will also make players think twice about not heading to calls from their country. For now, we will continue to observe what is going on and see if there will be a change in the pattern of this in months and years to come.