Africa crying out for a new superstar as continent bids to break World Cup quarter-final glass ceiling

Almost every bulletin from Brazil, about failed construction deadlines, transport problems and security alerts draws a feeling of quiet satisfaction from the last place to host a World Cup.

South Africa can sympathise. It endured years of scepticism about its ability to organise sport’s biggest juggernaut. It remains proud of the good job it made of it. For South Africans, that is as close as they will come to sharing the experience of Brazil 2014.

Their own team, the brittle Bafana Bafana, are not there. But there is hope the five nations from the continent which Africa’s first World Cup was supposed to boost can now raise the bar, on the field. Optimistically, 2010 had been styled a sporting branch of a wider 'African renaissance', an expression of the whole continent’s capability, its growth and self-sufficiency.

There is a substantial legacy. By June 2010, US$70million had already been spent specifically on football facilities and infrastructure across Africa, from Mozambique to Mauritania, as part of the South Africa 2010 project.

There have been plenty of subsequent storylines featuring startling upward mobility.

Clubs from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Morocco reached the final in two of the last four World Club Cups, previously the exclusive domain of European and South American teams.

At the Africa Cup of Nations, the traditional elite were confronted by dynamic upstarts: Zambia won their first Nations Cup in 2012; Burkina Faso reached the final in 2013.

But on the grandest stage, Africa now confronts its most stubborn glass ceiling, the quarter-finals. Since Cameroon dragged England into extra-time in a last-eight tie at Italia 1990, only Senegal, losing quarter-finalists in 2002, and Ghana, who arrived within seconds of the last-four in Soweto, have threatened the medal positions.

The last of those defeats still hurts. But for Luis Suárez’s handball, on the goal-line, at the end of extra-time of Ghana against Uruguay, Africa’s own World Cup would almost certainly have celebrated the event’s first African semi-finalist.

Asamoah Gyan missed the subsequent penalty; Uruguay won the shoot-out. “That was a shame for everybody in Africa,” recalls Andre Ayew, the Ghanaian winger. “We had done enough to win that tie and make history.”

Ayew, who took home a silver medal from the voting for the tournament’s best young player, is among a worldly group of Ghanaians ambitious to make amends in Brazil for that setback, and for semi-final exits at the last two Nations Cups.

For the first time in three World Cups, the Black Stars will be guided by a native Ghanaian, Kwesi Appiah, who, along with Nigeria’s Stephen Keshi, aspires to break a mould. No African coach has ever taken a team past the groups.

The tendency of African federations to turn, ahead of major tournaments, to managers from Europe has become a bugbear, even an affront. For Keshi, who captained Nigeria at the 1994 World Cup , it is almost a crusade.

“I am against African teams employing mediocre coaches from Europe,” he says. “We have quality African former players, who can do the same thing, but they don’t give them the opportunity because they’re just black dudes. I don’t like that.”

Keshi’s second stint as Nigeria coach already looks unusually long. It began in 2011, survived his threat to resign immediately after winning the 2103 Cup of Nations, and has developed a clear gameplan, based on rapid counter-attacking and a sound last line of defence.

The side who line up against Iran in Nigeria’s opening fixture of Group F will bear little resemblance to the experimental XI who drew 2-2 with Scotland at the end of last month.

They have an excellent first-choice goalkeeper in Vincent Enyeama and a powerful centre-forward in Emmanuel Emenike, of Fenerbahce. Keshi also has an idea of John Obi Mikel’s best use, which is unlike that of most of the last five Chelsea managers: He wants Mikel further forward, feeding passes behind the opposition defence.

The Super Eagles can list several reasons for optimism. They are African champions for the first time since the early 1990s, acclimatised to conditions at last summer’s Confederations Cup, and should regard a group including Iran and the debutants Bosnia-Herzegovina as manageable.

Appiah’s assignment appears more daunting. Ghana open Group G against the United States who they eliminated at the last-16 stage in South Africa, but then meet Germany and Portugal.

Gyan, who now plays in the UAE, captains the Black Stars and remains central to their tactics, with his ability to shield the ball at centre-forward and create space for runners like Marseille’s Ayew, Juventus’s Kwadwo Asamoah and Kevin-Prince Boateng, of Schalke 04.

“This is a strong Ghana squad, but it may be between generations,” observes Claude Le Roy, the French coach who has worked with half a dozen African national teams, including Ghana. The older generation’s doyen? Michael Essien, who last season played a full 90 minutes just three times for AC Milan following his January move from Chelsea.

Ivory Coast have a high quota of veterans, too, members of the so-called “golden generation”. Many have known each other since childhoods spent at one of football’s most productive academies.

The Abidjan club ASEC Mimosas schooled, among others, the Touré brothers, Gervinho, Didier Zokora, and the former Chelsea winger, Salomon Kalou, who believes that bond is the national team’s forte. “You can see how we grew up in the same system from our routines, the way we pass and move for each other.” Kalou says. “We also know we can score goals from anywhere.”

Kalou has had a strong season at Lille, as has Gervinho, at Roma, and Wilfried Bony, at Swansea. Yaya Toure enjoyed an outstanding nine months for Manchester City.

What the Ivory Coast of Didier Drogba and the ASEC graduates have yet to do is bring their collected expertise to bear on a major tournament. In the last decade, two Nations Cups finals have been lost on penalties and two World Cups have ended at the group phase. In Brazil, though, they face a kinder first hurdle than in 2006 or 2010, with Japan, Colombia and Greece the group opponents.

For Cameroon, a more brutal spectre looms – they are in the host’s Group A, with Croatia and Mexico — along with an alarming lack of momentum. The Indomitable Lions, once Africa’s World Cup standard-bearers, failed to make the last Nations Cup because they lost to the Cape Verde islands – population 500,000 – in a play-off.

They scraped through their World Cup eliminator against Tunisia thanks largely to the alert goalkeeping of Charles Itandje, once of Liverpool. The relationship between Samuel Eto’o – who told his team-mates he was retiring after the first leg of that play-off, and then reversed the decision – and Volker Finke, the German head coach, has been strained.

Algeria complete the quintet, to the surprise of those who watched them fail to progress beyond round one at the 2013 Nations Cup. The same capacity to frustrate which blunted England in Cape Town four years ago is part of their make-up, as is the absence of a destructive striker ahead of Sofiane Fegouhli, the industrious Valencia midfielder.

Algeria would be unlikely cheerleaders for African self-sufficiency: A majority of their first XI come from the country’s large French diaspora, sons and grandsons of Algerian migrants. Their coach, Vahid Halilhodzic, is Bosnian.

All five of qualifiers were in South Africa four years ago, which might suggest the continent’s hierarchy has stagnated, were it not for the evidence of recent Nations Cups. What is lacking is a new global superstar from Africa.

Yaya Toure was the sole African nominee on the shortlist for the 2013 Ballon D’Or. He has now been Africa’s Player of the Year three seasons on the trot, this after Drogba and Eto’o won it five times between them in the previous seven years. A proper African renaissance probably needs a fresh, young figurehead.