Didier Drogba is not the finest footballer Africa has produced. If your criterion is pure talent, he's much inferior to Samuel Eto'o, George Weah, Nwankwo Kanu, Jay-Jay Okocha and Abedi Pele, among others you could name. But if you want a matchless demonstrator of the power of will, look no further than the Drog.
If you could triple your wages by joining a superior rival employer to work alongside more accomplished colleagues, would you? You'd have to be stupid or mad to stay put. But the question takes on a different moral dimension if your current salary is the dizzying sum of £70000 a week - and if your current employer is willing to double your pay to keep you.
With African stars ripping up the English Premiership in recent weeks, the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations has become a tantalising show in prospect. But will faffing Safa bosses provide a fitting stage to match the wattage of the continent's stars? We shall see.
Good grief. What a weekend that was. Just when we thought football had become a yawnsome procession of foregone conclusions, it turns around and administers an invigorating elbow to our collective jaw.
South Africa's GDP would double if we could somehow monetise the words of Fikile Mbalula. The sports minister's communications are a vast, unexploited and renewable natural resource, potentially more valuable than the Karoo gas fields.
Contrary to popular belief, there is no link between genius and insanity.
If anyone deserves his daily crust at Manchester City, it's Vincent Kompany. The Belgian skipper's job description includes the on-pitch management of the mind of Mario Balotelli, and the overall maintenance of harmony in a squad populated with neurotic brutes who wear their hearts on their sleeves and store their brains in their insteps.
It's no fun being a South African striker. Even if you're topping the scoring charts, you get vilified because you're not slamming in goals at a rate of one per game, like Leo Messi or Robin van Persie and Mario Gomez. Being human is no longer a valid excuse in the surreal era of the superhuman forward.
Most of us, many Liverpool fans included, would support the proposition that Luis Suarez is a tool.
You have to salute the sheer daft courage of Powerlines FC. Throughout their 24-0 brutalisation by Mamelodi Sundowns on Sunday, the peroxided plaasjapies refused to compromise on their incompetence. They stood by it to the end.
Comparing Benni McCarthy to Nelson Mandela is a hell of a stretch. For one thing, Mandela is probably fitter. But Benni's imperious overhead volley against Maritzburg United threatens to give him Madibaesque mythical status among the Ghost.
You can accuse Asamoah "Baby Jet" Gyan of many things, but media savvy isn't one of them. The Ghanaian striker has just emitted a thunderous PR brain-fart by quitting international football "indefinitely". Which is to say, until the next time he can be bothered to represent his country.
Apologies for this big slice of cheese, but Chipolopolo conquered Africa with love.
Non-apologisers go far in life. These Teflon dons delegate accountability for their balls-ups, a valuable skill that helps them levitate up the hierarchies of power like so many Armani-suited fakirs. But since many non-apologisers are also non-excellent, they soon rise above their competence and find themselves in a fix where apology is the only solution.
There was a great cartoon published in the New Yorker magazine recently in which a hulking American football player tells a post-match interviewer: "First of all, I'd like to blame God for helping us lose today."
Arsene Wenger's gigantic jacket-cum-sleeping bag is becoming a neat visual metaphor for his predicament.
Is it time for a salary cap in South African football? Maybe, if it's true that Elias Pelembe's new contract with Mamelodi Sundowns is worth R480000 a month.
Hail Mary, Thierry and Paul. Not quite a holy trinity - but the second two deities were once (in football terms) almost as full of grace as the holy virgin.
A new year looms, bringing with it yet another Africa Cup of Nations.
Respect to Steven Pienaar, Siphiwe Tshabalala and Katlego Mphela for taking legal action against SABMiller over image rights. It takes considerable gonads to sue a company that banked a profit of R16-billion last year.
Dani Alves has a history of saying it like it is, the clearest example of course being the large tattoo emblazoned across his chest that reads "Dani A".
Mixed in with public sadness over a former sport star's suicide is an unspoken twinge of judgment. It's easy to quietly cast someone like Gary Speed as ungrateful for all his blessings, to accuse him of "letting the side down", especially since his lot appeared to lack any hardships.
It seems the English want to see the back of Sepp Blatter. Good luck with that, lads. Your dream is a beautiful one, but the all-powerful Swiss buffoon is here to stay, along with gravity, death and the offside rule.
Katlego Mphela's sulky goal celebration against Ivory Coast was understandable. Not that his sarcasm will put a stop to the asinine antics of the Bafana Boo-Boy Association.
May Mahlangu is not fooling around. Not since Sibusiso Zuma's heyday with FC Copenhagen a decade ago has a South African player so dominated a European league.
Has Theo Walcott found his football brain behind the sofa? The Arsenal winger's audacious goal against Chelsea suggested he mighty finally be attaining the speed of thought that his pace demands.
Newcastle was as quiet as a library in August, while London, Birmingham and Manchester burned. According to some Geordies, the city's hoodie gangs stayed indoors on account of a rumour that Cheik Tioté had agreed to patrol the streets after dark with the "Feds", armed only with his boots.
Please, no. That's all there is to say about Safa's appeal to CAF, demanding that it change the Nations Cup qualification rules because we failed to read them. Talk about flogging the stable door after the dead horse has bolted.
Bafana must mind their own business in Nelspruit. There's a reasonable fear in the home camp that Egypt's under-23s will somehow succumb to Niger, thus nullifying a South African victory over Sierra Leone.
Given the righteous fury directed at Carlos Tevez this week, you'd think he had ritually sacrificed a baby panda bear and gargled with its blood on the Manchester City bench in Munich.
Barcelona can't rule the world indefinitely. It's hard to imagine right now, but in a decade's time the Catalan giants could be a modest force on the European stage, just as the once-invincible AC Milan are these days.
So exactly how good is Oupa "Ace" Manyisa? We all know how good his 40m golazo against Sundowns was.
It's been a splashtastic transfer window in England, with a tidy total of £448-million changing hands. Much of that loot was spent by Manchester City, Chelsea, Liverpool and Arsenal. But will the chasing pack's impressive investment help depose the English Premier League's defending champions next May?
Samuel Eto'o has let African football down. By joining the Russian club Anzhi Makhachkala for mercenary reasons, the Cameroonian has sold off his credibility and his pride.
FOLLOWING the latest bout of gran clasico handbaggery, Gerard "Waka Waka" Pique tweetulated that Jose Mourinho is "destroying Spanish football".
DESPITE England's passing resemblance to hell this week, a brand-new English Premier League season will (probably) begin on schedule tomorrow.
"Just because you are a character doesn't mean that you have character." So said The Wolf (Harvey Keitel) in Pulp Fiction, and he might as well have been talking to Joey Barton.
Question of the day: How many more goals are left in Benni McCarthy? Some heinous haters out there will reckon there are more hit singles left in Milli Vanilli, or more commandments yet to be announced by Moses.
Schadenfreude is not very nice, but it's good clean fun when it is about the woes of the filthy rich. Who can blame the entire (non-News International) British press for flying into mass ecstasy over the misery of the Murdochs?
SOULEYMANE Coulibaly . remember the name. The Ivorian will be 17 on Boxing Day, and he will also, in due course, become one of the great goalscorers of the next decade. "Will" is a reckless word, but this kid is just too freakish a talent for "might". Perhaps "should" is a fair compromise.
IF ATTACKING partnerships were measured only on aggregate ability, then Carlos Tevez and Leo Messi would be an unrivalled duo. But they aren't.
NOSTALGIA is usually good for you. Remembering the past fondly, even a past you never experienced, is fun and therapeutic. But it's not without risk. It can lead apparently reasonable people to yearn for things that were crap the first time round, such as apartheid South Africa, or Stone Age brain surgery techniques, or Milli Vanilli.
It's not Cesc Fabregas's fault that Arsenal haven't won a pottie, let alone a pot, in six years. Far from it: he's been the team's best player throughout their extended nappy-wearing phase. But if the Spanish playmaker leaves the Gunners this off-season, as seems likely, he could push Arsenal forward.
