@7negi ; Same thing goes for Cricket also. Cricket players from Australia, England, New Zealand are more famous in India but people hardly know them in their countries. In UK< I used to watch some quiz programs. In one round they sued to show pics of celebrities and one has to identify. British people were always struggling with their cricketers-Botham, Gooch, Gower, gatting, Nasser Husain, Gough most of them were unable to identify their cricket players while in India people do know them by face. In those countries, Football is famous,not Cricket. Same thing in Africa they recognise those players who made it big in Europe, not anywhere else.
The problem with the Africans are the ones who just pop out of nowhere and do nothing... example being a guy like Henry Ezeh or this season with Waheed Adekunle. These guys just come from gods nowhere and then do average to below average in I-League.
@goalkeepar - you didnt see random non africans because you didnt want to see or you have not been following much.
Since odafa is random, so i guess I can select players who have been shittier than him.
Diamondstar (MB), Simon storey (MB), Zeleny (MB, CB), aleksander (HAL), The goalkeeper in United sikkim, billy mehmet (dempo), Mohemmadan sporting asian quota player, how good was united SC's mustafa?, Mitrovich (east bengal), i guess one of the asian players in randagied was ineffective, then there was this player Omi probably in air india, alan gow had pedigree but how good was he?, edmar was sucessful with pune and went to europe but now when he came in rangdajied he was unfit and was plain shit, then the brazillian who came in MB was not bad but not good as well when to bhowanipore,
the problem is low quality, unfit, smart talking poor playing, random, fit low skill etc etc players come from everywhere, particularly from Africa. This doesn't mean we have to target Africa or Nigeria as if that is not applicable for Australia or England. Problem is players not the region or country.
In fact, I give credited to many african/brazillian players to be able to make India there home, blend with us and play decently in the i league which has limited quality and scope. It is better than high pedigree player coming, tweeting their way to glory and complaining about cows, or fighting with locals, or coming here as fully unfit just as for some practice
To be fair, last year I have been doing a lot of research on the Scandinavian leagues and the Baltic leagues and they to have their share of "random africans" - African players who have no history in other leagues. Some do have slight history known from some random academy in Nigeria or whatever but for the most part they just happen to show up and I am talking about the top leagues in Norway, Denmark, Sweden etc.
So ya, the problem is not these guys, you can find some really cheap gems in these regions. The problem is the scouting on such players. The old style African player is a dying breed in Indian football. Before you would expect an entire army of guys like Odafa or Waheed but not it is rare to see these guys and for the most part they are failing to make much of an impact. Sure, some guys like Odafa or Ranti Martins still manage to do well but lets be honest, there times in Indian football are slowly coming to an end and it showed last season.
@rudra the players which u maintained (not all) were not random but they failed in India and I believe with proper scouting we can get good random players eg. berreto, beto and coutinho (Kuwait sc)
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Same thing in Africa they recognise those players who made it big in Europe, not anywhere else.