With the World Cup coming to Africa for the first time, fanatic football fans, carried away by emotion, have projected that an African team will emerge victorious on July 11. However, one only has to have a cold, hard look at the facts to see how wildly far-fetched a prediction this is.

Football icon Edison Arantes do Nascimento, better known as Pele, made an infamous statement in 1977 that, “An African nation will win the World Cup before the year 2000”. Time has proved the Brazilian three-time World Cup winner wrong, but it hasn’t dissuaded soccer pundits from making similar predictions.

This year alone, footballing luminaries such as Franz Beckenbauer, George Weah and Abedi Pele have also hailed 2010 as the year an African team will triumph.

Ghanaian Abedi Pele stated:  “We definitely will have one African team that goes far. When I say goes far I mean as far as raising the trophy. When I make this prediction people laugh, but I believe it. This is our best chance of lifting the trophy because, if you study the history of the World Cup, Brazil is the only team to win it outside their continent.”

Perhaps to prove his prophetic abilities, Abedi adds: “When I told football officials that African champions Egypt would defeat world champions Italy during the FIFA Confederations Cup this year, they all laughed. It happened and they had to admit I was right,”

Abedi was the first African to win the CAF Champions League. Beckebauer won the World Cup as player and coach with Germany, while the Liberian Weah remains the only African to have won the World Player of the Year award.

All three possessed brilliant talent as players, but do their predictions hold any water?

Africa’s advantages coming into South Africa 2010 are undeniable. The continent is blessed with world class talent, the haphazard preparations that bedevilled African teams are a relic of the past, and the competition will take place on African turf. Perhaps even more telling is that the continent will be represented by six emissaries, its highest number of ambassadors to a World Cup ever.

Yet, put those perceived strengths on a weighing machine with the odds stacked against African teams, and the scales instantly tip towards their defeat. The World Cup winners’ club, just like your average mafia gang, is an exclusive league. Right of admission to this gang of seven is strictly reserved, with Brazil, Italy, Germany, Argentina, Uruguay, France and England the only members thus far.

Worse still, with the honourable exception of Brazil, all inductees to the World Cup winners’ hall of fame gained their initial entry by winning the prestigious trophy in their own backyard. Multiple winners Italy, Germany, Argentina and Uruguay all first held the trophy when they hosted the competition, the same goes for single-time winners England and France.

It only follows then that if fate was to bestow the World Cup trophy upon any Africa team in South Africa, it would be the Bafana Bafana. However, fate is not the determining factor of victory.

South Africa qualified for the World Cup as hosts. If that had not been the case, Bafana Bafana wouldn’t even have made it to the competition. Though World Cup fever has whipped an optimistic fan base into a frenzy as the tournament approaches, the most honest supporter in Johannesburg will admit that sidestepping embarrassment remains the host nation’s solitary mission.

Africa’s other envoys should enjoy better fortunes than South Africa but again, fate seems to have placed a treacherous minefield before them. Ivory Coast, Africa’s most realistic hope, was unfortunately landed in the Group of Death.

Ghana, drawn alongside Germany, Serbia and Australia in a tight Group D, face a similar problem, as does Cameroon which will waste precious energy battling it out with the Netherlands, Denmark and Japan in Group E. The same goes for Nigeria and Algeria who are grouped alongside Greece, South Korea and Argentina in Group B and England, USA and Slovenia in Group C respectively.

The lottery of the fixture computer aside, a look at both the on-pitch and off-pitch personnel in the African ranks doesn’t inspire confidence.

Ghana and Nigeria travelled to South Africa without their most influential stars after Michael Essien and Jon Obi Mikel were sidelined by injury. Didier Drogba, Ivory Coast’s own talisman, is a walking wounded while Cameroon’s Samuel Eto’o at some point even wondered whether he should bother turning up after his compatriot, Roger Milla, questioned his commitment to the cause.

If things look discouraging on-field, they are decidedly depressing on the bench.

All African teams, bar Algeria, will be led by foreign coaches. The problem with that is that none of those foreign coaches arouse a great deal of optimism. They are all either international rejects or have chequered records at the World Cup.

Ivory Coast’s Sven Goran Eriksson left his last postings in England and Mexico as a figure of scorn. Cameroon’s Paul Le Guen had to be frogmarched out of his last jobs at Rangers and PSG after pedestrian results. Nigeria’s Lars Lagerback was forced to resign after failing to lead Sweden to the 2010 World Cup, while South Africa’s Carlos Alberto Parreira was similarly ejected after Brazil’s limp performance in 2006, with accusations of playing an “outdated brand of football” hot on his heels.

Ghana’s Milovan Rajevac, who would have escaped with a clean record, is hamstrung by the fact that he is a relative novice in the international arena. Such inherent handicaps all make for grim reading, even before taking into consideration such typically African frailties like dodgy goalkeeping and atrocious defensive organization.

Despite the multitudes of African players plying their trade in top European leagues, those twin evils were still evident throughout the qualifying campaigns. All African representatives conceded in excess of two late goals in their campaigns, with Algeria, Ivory Coast and Nigeria conceding four apiece. Ghana and Cameroon, with five late goals between them, fared no better.

That no country has ever won the World Cup with a dubious defensive record must make even the most incurably optimistic African fan banish the thought of a native captain hoisting that hallowed trophy. If that won’t suffice, then how about the cold fact that to win the World Cup, an African team will have to overcome pre-tournament favourites Spain, a team which possesses the ball so jealously one needs a combination of a court order and a binding UN resolution to win it back.

Publication rights to this feature are available from Africa Media Online.