Aliou Cissé Prepares Senegal to Shine at World Cup


DIAMNIADIO, Senegal – Standing on the fringes of Senegal’s brand new national stadium, Aliou Cissé, the biggest fan of his own team, waved his arms to the 50,000 fans and encouraged them to cheer louder, his signature dreadlocks bouncing off their shoulders.

Fans roared, clapped, and blew their vuvuzelas more deafeningly. Minutes later, Senegal defeated its fiercest rival, Egypt, to qualify for the football World Cup, which kicks off in Qatar this November.

“When we’re together, Senegal wins,” said the 46-year-old grinning Mr. Cissé at a post-game press conference. Or, as he likes to repeat in Wolof, one of the country’s national languages, “Mboloo Mooy gagner” – “Unity brings victory.”

If Senegal is feeling proud and patriotic these days, it’s largely thanks to its national team and Mr Cissé, a former professional player who reinvented Senegalese football and built what is now the best team in Africa.

“The barometer of Senegalese society today is football,” said Mr. Cissé in a recent interview with The New York Times in Diamniadio, a newly built city on the outskirts of Dakar. “People watch us play and they’re proud to be Senegalese, proud to be African.”

Mr. Cissé led the team that won the Africa Cup of Nations earlier this year, the country’s first ever football championship. By doing so, he proved to the people of Senegal that one of them can succeed where no one else has.

European managers have long coached several African national teams, including Senegal’s, but this is changing, a change embodied by Mr Cissé.

From Algeria to Zimbabwe, Sudan to Burkina Faso, the rising generation of African executives is building a new coaching culture across the continent. Sixteen teams currently have local coaches, and the three sub-Saharan African teams headed to Qatar this year – Cameroon, Ghana and Senegal – all have ex-national players as managers.

“More and more professional players on the Continent want to be coaches,” said Ferdinand Coly, Mr. Cissé’s former teammate. “Local expertise is gaining ground.”

Cissé claims that European coaches have done a lot for African teams, but that era is fading.

Born in the Casamance region of Southern Senegal in 1976, Mr. Cissé moved to France at the age of 9 and grew up in the suburbs of Paris. one of the best football talent pools in the world.

His trajectory is similar to many African players who grew up in Europe or attended youth academies there. “I was French when I was out, but I was really Senegalese at home,” Mr. Cissé said about speaking to Wolof while in France and following the family’s traditions.

Mr Cissé joined Lille youth academy in northern France at the age of 14 and played for French and English clubs in the 1990s and 2000s, including French powerhouse Paris St.-Germain, Portsmouth and Birmingham City, which competed at the top of England. league.

At the 2002 World Cup, he captained a Senegalese team that made it to the first World Cup – a surprise victory that astounded the then world champion France, which many still speak of with warm nostalgia. Senegal advanced to the quarterfinals, the team’s biggest success in the competition to date.

As a coach, Mr. Cissé now appeals to both Senegalese players who grew up in their home country and those who, like him, moved to France in his youth, building a bridge between the team’s “natives” and “binationals”. referred to among the staff of the team.

It’s been a long road to success. When Mr. Cissé took over the team in 2015, Senegal was performing poorly in the African Cup of Nations and failed to qualify for the last three World Cup editions. Mr. Cissé’s predecessors were dismissed one after another.

Seven years later, Mr. Cissé, nicknamed “El Tactico” for his effective but measured approach to the game, will lead Senegal to their third World Cup and their second World Cup as a coach. He says the era of “watching” African teams is over and someone will one day win the coveted trophy.

“Why aren’t we?” said.

Régis Bogaert, Mr. Cissé’s former French junior coach in Lille and now his assistant at the Senegalese team, said Mr. Cissé conveyed a sense of mission to his players. “It makes many people want to be the next Aliou Cissé in Senegal and Africa,” said Mr Bogaert.

Football, a national passion, is everywhere in Senegal, whether in youth academies nurturing future talents, on the beaches of Dakar, on empty construction sites and on the city cornice along the Atlantic Ocean.

“To be the coach of the national team today is to be a politician,” said Mr. Cissé, who often repeats that he lives in Senegal and feels the pressure of the country every day, unlike his players or foreign coaches living abroad. . “It’s about knowing your country’s economy, culture, education, and history.”

His sense of humor and fashion tastes also helped his popularity: Mr. Cissé usually wears bright white sneakers and thick black square glasses and keeps his dreadlocks under a New York Yankees or Team Senegal hat, giving him a cool vibe. father. He has five children that he says are as difficult to manage as the national team.

If Mr. Cissé has shared Senegal’s greatest achievements, he has also gone through some of the country’s worst traumas. He lost 11 relatives in a shipwreck in 2002 off the coast of Senegal and Gambia, in which more than 1,800 passengers died.

Senegal’s victory in the African Cup of Nations earlier this year comes 20 years after Mr Cissé missed a penalty in the final of the same tournament, depriving the team of its first trophy at the time.

Since then, Senegal has had happier days on the field and the national pride surrounding the team was fully revealed last month when Senegal defeated Egypt in a penalty shootout in their debut match at Diamniadio’s stadium.

Some fans said they slept outside the stadium the night before to make sure they got the best seats. Hours before it began, thousands more lined up to enter, whistles and drums filled the air.

“It’s a great day for Senegal,” said 30-year-old French-Senegalese Sally Diassy, ​​who lives in France, and said she’s visiting Senegal to support her favorite team.

The joy displayed after the win reflected the victorious return of the Senegalese players after winning the African Cup of Nations in February. Tens of thousands of fans greeted them as they marched through the streets of Dakar. President Macky Sall gave the team and Mr. Cissé’s staff about $83,000, along with some land in the capital and Diamniadio; That’s an exorbitant amount that has sparked some minor protests in a country where almost half the population lives below the poverty line.

But some players have also returned: Sadio Mané, the star of the team, has built a hospital in his hometown. Captain Kalidou Koulibaly bought an ambulance for his father’s village.

“Players want to be role models in their own country,” said Salif Diallo, a veteran football journalist who has followed Mr. Cissé’s career as a player and coach. “This team is changing the Senegalese perception of themselves.”

Those who know Mr. Cissé say that once he’s finished with the national team, he’ll want to play a bigger role for his country.

“I tried to set an example,” Mr. Cissé said of his career as both a player and a coach. “If a Senegalese player goes to Birmingham or Montpelier or wherever I play tomorrow, I hope it will be welcome because they will remember Aliou Cissé being a good man.”



Source link

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *