The thing that I think is missing from this account is that part of the attraction of the EPL over, say, La Liga or Serie A is that there are a lot more African playing there. When Africans watch the big four play, they are usually watching their own heroes – people they identify with. Arsenal, for instance, was quite plainly the most popular team in Uganda. But I suspect a lot of that support will leech to Man City along with Toure and Adebayor.

Also, how could you leave out the most amusing bit of Premiership-mania in east Africa: Rio Ferdinand’s “Come be my neighbour in Uganda” house-selling scheme? ( http://www.thespoiler.co.uk/index.php/2008/01/21/come-and-be-rio-ferdinands-neighbour-in-uganda).

What really saddened me was the extremist nature of a minority of mans who committed suicide or murder after a result went against their team. Though the minority, and I stress that, it shows to an extent how much the EPL has been taken by some African nations in a extreme example.

Of course, the other side to fandom is the shady agents promisng youngsters the chance at a shot to play for their favourite side in Europe. The youth system in Africa is so underdeveloped (the only academy I can think of, is the one in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, run by Guillou, a friend of Arsene Wenger) and this idea of child slavery and fleecing the savings of whole families is terrible.

Of course, it leads to misinformed morons like Platini looking to ban U18 worldwide transfers and blaming Wenger and Arsenal and placing Barcelona as the example, when they brought Messi over from Argentina at the age of 13, and others from Venezuela etc at similarly young ages. It’s the unregistered agents that need to be put on a leash and jailed.

Very interesting read and I’ll be coming back to this site frequently now.