Pan-Africa Football has taken a look at over thirty African players who began their career in African football and in a series of columns we will evaluate how the subjects of our first twenty scouting reports have progressed since we evaluated them. In the first part of the series we examine where the very first players we scouted and how they are performing at their current clubs. Below the players featured were scouted in June and July of 2020:

KV Oostende- Belgian Pro League

Rangers- Scottish Premiership

Pan-Africa Football’s first ever scouting report focused on the exciting and electric Fashion Sakala, who has moved on to a bigger stage with Scottish powerhouse Rangers and featured as a substitute in the 2021-22 UEFA Europa League final. The 25-year-old has certainly improved since his early days in Europe with Belgian club Oostende and earned his free transfer away following a 2020-21 season with sixteen goals, but many of the same issues still remain. As a pure striker who has not shown himself to be a versatile option capable of playing on the wing, Sakala did not do enough last season at the top of the formation for Rangers and has only played a minute so far in the 2022-23 season with new signing Antonio Colak grabbing his opportunity in the lineup.

Sakala is still an exciting player as proven by his statistics last season that saw him rank highly in attacking duels, dribble attempts/90 and success when engaging defenders in the Scottish Premiership. However, his efficiency on scoring opportunities was not good enough for a Rangers side that failed to defend their 2020-21 title and Sakala failed to score in all thirteen matches he took part in during Rangers’ campaign in UEFA club competition. The striker is capable of thriving but moving to a team that expects to win their domestic title every season and compete in UEFA competition appears to be too steep of a level for Fashion.