When it comes to Africa, it is generally considered appallingly un-PC to draw conclusions, so here is a list of facts. When you visit the Ghanaian Embassy website, you will find it easier to organise a “boob job” in Accra, the capital, than a visa. And when you do click on “visa”, you will find them trying to sell you a credit card.

On arriving here this week, the four teams travelling to Kumasi, Ghana’s second city, found the main intended hotel unbuilt. In Accra, two of the training pitches have been declared unplayable. And when Nigeria arrived on Thursday, they discovered that the plane for their internal connecting flight was too small for the squad and spent two hours waiting for another. They were offered a four-hour coach trip instead and elected to stay overnight.

Oh yes, and officials have been competing for airtime to hail this African Cup of Nations to be the best-organised ever. It does not start until tomorrow, but that is beside the point.

We may simply conclude that some things never change. Or we can turn our gaze to the football and ask whether African football is dying out. Curiously, every expert agrees that standards are rising, which may sound like a contradiction in terms.

On arrival in Ghana, advertising could persuade you that Michael Essien is the only player in the tournament. However, some more facts: there are 40 players from the Barclays Premier League; at the previous tournament, two years ago in Egypt, there were more French club players than African; this time there are more French coaches than African.

Yes, the country is sure to be swarming with agents and talent scouts, but unless they are focusing on the unknowns — Sudan, Namibia and Zambia — they have probably missed the boat because the cream are spotted by under-20 level and have set sail, usually for Belgium, where they can get European passports.

The result? The Europeanisation of African football. Or, as Marcel Desailly, a Ghanaian Frenchman and BBC pundit, said: “We have lost something. You once had African players who wanted to run with the ball and enjoy themselves. Now there is a more European style, less creativity, less fantasy.”

Berti Vogts, the Nigeria coach, put it another way. “If football in Nigeria was organised as in Germany, the team would be unbeatable,” he said. “Even Brazil would have to watch out.” He was referring as much to Nigeria’s internal combustibility (they have arrived at this tournament on the back of their customary pay row) as to style. The style point being that if you substitute self-expression for structure, or take the Brazilian-ness out of Brazil, you may get somewhere — as Brazil proved in 1994.

But if we are to conclude that exotic Africa is dead, we need to meet Tom Vernon, a 29-year-old visionary from High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire. Vernon can hand you two business cards, one that says he is Manchester United’s “Scout for the African Continent” (no small job, that one), the other that declares him founder of Right to Dream, a football academy an hour’s drive northeast of Accra that is truly inspirational.

He has a third job title, which is expert television analyst for the cup’s host broadcasters, but the academy is his real passion: 12 boys in five year groups, 60 of the most sought-after positions in the country. Outside the country, too: one 13-year-old found his way there alone from Togo and, having failed to make the grade, was so determined to stay that the Togolese embassy had to be called to take him away.

The best under-15 player is Osei Kwame, a rough diamond from the slums of Kumasi who did not know his alphabet and, aged 10, would leave home to live on the streets for three months at a time. When Vernon’s scouts arrived at his house to tell him that he had won an academy place, his mother thought that it was the police coming to take him away again. Even if Kwame does not make it in the game — and Vernon is confident that he will — he will leave the academy with a number of GCSEs.

The point here is that the proliferation of football academies cropping up in many parts of Africa mostly work on the income long-shot that, of the 1,000-odd boys they look at, one is going to be the meal ticket they sell on into Europe. Yet because Right to Dream has charitable status, it does not look at its boys as commodities; indeed, more will go into American private schools (on soccer scholarships) than European football clubs, so Vernon sees neither the necessity nor the logic in moulding a conveyor belt of European-type football product.

In any case, the evidence from Ajax — once upheld as the model of youth development — is that you cannot simply impose European knowhow on Africa, as Ajax attempted to do when they marched into Cape Town. The product — the club, Ajax Cape Town — has not yielded them a single player. Likewise, Feyenoord have not taken one player from their academy in Ghana. Vernon, however, is quite new to the business; he has two boys signed with Fulham (and getting European passports in Belgium) and confidently predicts that in six years he will have four playing in both the Premier League and the World Cup.

A mark of how his boys have developed as personalities is the two Fulham signings, who each voluntarily pay ¤400 (about £300) a month to sponsor a boy through Right to Dream. A sign, maybe, of the way forward is Vernon’s insistence that, football-wise, “you have to try and keep something different in these boys. We certainly don’t put the shackles on.”

How does this all affect the African Cup of Nations? Vernon’s answer is that success in this competition rests on the balance between the European influence and the African.

Otto Pfister, the Cameroon and former Togo coach, put it another way. “If a coach is clever, he keeps his players’ particuliarities,” he said. “Some coaches enclose the players in a tactical scheme, like a prison. OK, you have to give them a position, but you need some freedom.

“If an English coach came to Guinea, for instance, and he brought some discipline and the English way of life? No chance. You have to accept first the culture of the people and their particuliarity. OK, you have to influence them positively, but don’t change their mentality.”

Sometimes a “particuliarity” can be a burden. In Ghana, boys play their football in streets or patches of land using piles of stones to make tiny goals. The game is called “muntsedi”, the joy is all in dribbling and beating a man rather than scoring and this helps to explain Ghana’s proliferation of midfield players and their dearth of strikers. In Ivory Coast, though, goalposts are painted on every bare wall and the glory is all in the scoring — which explains Didier Drogba, Salomon Kalou et al.

Ghana’s lack of strikeforce explains why Ivory Coast, the more complete team, are the favourites to win this tournament. Nigeria have a strong squad and lack structure but have the perfect coach to drill one into them. But not too far, let us hope. Let us also hope that Vernon is right, that if you keep a piece of your soul in Africa, you might find victory there, too.

Unplolished gems

Unknown stars who are tipped to shine in Ghana:

Anthony Annan (Ghana)
Rated by some as technically superior to Michael Essien, though not as athletic. If given a chance to play alongside Essien in midfield, he may tempt big clubs to pluck him out of FC Start in Norway.

Chris Katongo (Zambia)
A pile of goals saw him recently transferred to Brondby, the Danish side. This tournament will be a good measure to see if that is the limit of his powers or whether he can reach even higher.

Pascal Feindouno (Guinea)
The team’s playmaker has often seemed on the verge of a move to a Champions League club. Recently extended his contact at St-Etienne but this may be the stage to elevate him beyond.

— Words by Owen Slot

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