Pele is considered to be one of the greatest players to ever grace a football pitch as the retired footballer managed to reach a number of outstanding feats during his playing career including winning the FIFA World Cup in 3 different occasions as well as scoring over 600 goals for his former club Santos.

However, there is something that Pele has always seemed to struggle with and that’s in relation to his predictions as the Brazilian never seems to get his football predictions correctly.

Back in 1998, Pele said that he believed Spain would win the 1998 World Cup in France but the Spanish squad was knocked out in the first round after suffering a surprising defeat against Nigeria and drawing with Paraguay.

Fast-forward a few years and Pele went on saying that Argentina and France would both reach the finals of the 2002 World Cup and it didn’t happen as both countries were knocked out in the first round.

One of the latest predictions that Pele announced is that an African nation would win the World Cup before the year 2000 but it hasn’t happened and it’s already 2015.

The main reason that is believed on to why any African nation has been able to even reach the semi-finals of any World Cup is not because of the lack of talent that the country has but instead it’s being pointed towards the amount of corruption, incompetence and indifference that many African governments are being run.

There have been occasions on which players from African nations have been left stranded in airports for over 8 hours, while others have lost their equipment. During long 10 hour trips by plane, some players travel on the business class while others are moved to other sections.

It’s starting to seem that certain African players who play extremely well with their respective clubs and play in top leagues around the world just don’t have the motivation or pride to play at the same level with their respective countries simply because everything is being edged towards the money instead of having the pride to wear their national team colors and represent their nations at the big stage.

There is a possibility that an African nation will be able to win a FIFA World Cup but it wont happen until a series of changes occur within the internal structure of African Football and when the political as well as the economic benefits stop dominating football in Africa.