By Ebube Dike

In today’s football setting, across the globe, top scorers of different football leagues have it in mind that they will bag the golden shoe/boot award or something equivalent to that. Here in Africa, instead of the golden shoe, we have various ways to reward our top scorers.

The country of Mali in West Africa has reportedly awarded their first and second top scorers with a cow and goat respectively. If you evaluate it, it’s like rewarding Bradley Grobler who was PSL’S top scorer last campaign with a cow or rewarding Peter Shalulile (second top goalsorer) with a goat.

South Africans have reacted to this ridiculous but weird strategy of rewarding players. However, it’s worthy to note that this isn’t something new.

There was a time Kaizer Chiefs were invited to Swaziland to participate in a tournament and they managed to win it. At the end, King Mswati showed them a nice gesture by handing over the head of a cow to the then Amakhosi captain, Shabba.

A lot of people are of the opinion that Mali might not have being able to afford a golden shoe or it’s equivalent rather they opted for a Cow. A golden boot is worth much as many times as any cow.

It is believed however, that the tournament was played in rural Mali and cow and ram are valuables there because they are majority fulbe.

This is not the first time strange but activity this nature is happening in Africa football.

Recall that in 2019, a Malawian player received a chicken for winning the man of the match award in a football game.

Nyasa Big Bullets’ striker, Hassan Kajoke was given a chicken for his exemplary performance in their 5-0 win over Karonge United TNM Super League match at Kamuzu Stadium in Malawi.

Kajoke scored a brace and as he helped his side run over Karonge United in the Malawian league clash.

The league management had earlier said that the award was given by a sponsor. However, because the photo attracted a lot of comments on social media, the Malawian league website came out to say that the chicken was given to Kajoke by a fan who was impressed by his performance in the match.

The club, however, did not have anything to hide as they posted the photo of Kajoke receiving the chicken on their Facebook page.

The unidentified fan asked for permission to be allowed to present his gift, covered in a holed carton and inscribed ‘Kajoke BB’.

The seemingly avid supporter had the chicken spread with red colors, apparently signifying the tradition red and white colors for the Super League heavyweights.