IN 1977, Pelé predicted an African team would win the World Cup before the end of the 20th century. It was and remains a bold prediction: it wasn’t even until the following year that an African country, Tunisia, actually won a match at the tournament. Over the following decade, African football experienced a steady progression, culminating in Cameroon’s near-miss in 1990, when they came within a Gary Lineker penalty of reaching the semi-finals. The quarter-finals, matched by Senegal in 2002 and Ghana in 2010, remain an insurmountable hurdle for African teams. For 28 years, this football-mad continent of two billion people has been totally stagnant. Given the quality of the players produced by Africa in that time, this is nothing short of a tragedy.…