South Africa has done a great job hosting the 2010 FIFA World Cup, from the quality of their venues to their fan support.
Foreign managers are at the helm of most of the African nations, and Christopher Clarey of the New York Times reports on the imported coaches.
This is supposed to be Africa’s World Cup, but Africa’s teams, many on the verge of elimination, are still not entirely Africa’s teams.
Not with Sven-Goran Eriksson, the Swede who spawned a thousand tabloid headlines in England, coaching Ivory Coast despite not speaking French or any of the country’s indigenous languages.
Not with Lars Lagerback, another late recruit from Sweden, coaching Nigeria. Not with the French former star Paul Le Guen coaching Cameroon, and not with Carlos Alberto Parreira, the classy Brazilian, back in charge of South Africa.
Foreign coaches have been a fixture in African soccer since the beginning at the World Cup. In 1934, when Egypt became the first African nation to participate in the tournament, James McRae of Scotland was the manager. It took 36 years for another African team to participate, and when Morocco managed it, in 1970, the coach was Blagoje Vidinic of Yugoslavia.
But this is a deeply symbolic year and occasion, one that was supposed to underscore the possibilities of Africa and its present-day qualities. How inconvenient, then, that of the six African teams in the tournament, only Algeria is coached by one of its own: the 64-year-old Rabah Saadane.
“For my country, it’s symbolic, because Mr. Saadane is the man who qualified us for the World Cup,” said Madjid Bougherra, an Algerian defender. “It’s been 24 years since we qualified, and Mr. Saadane was the coach then, too. He is very respected in Algeria, and I think it gives a good image, the right image for Algeria to have an Algerian coach.”
For the other five African teams, it looks very much like a missed opportunity, and the situation, although more nuanced than it first appears and hardly new, remains a wellspring of continental angst.
“Let me put it this way,” Simaata Simaata, general secretary of the Zambia Football Coaches Association, told the BBC this year, “it’s like saying David Livingstone discovered the Victoria Falls. No, David Livingstone was the first European to see the Victoria Falls. There were already local people who knew where the mighty wonder of the world existed, and they were the local scouts who knew the terrain. That’s the way we view the contribution of foreign coaches.”
Foreign managers are at the helm of most of the African nations, and Christopher Clarey of the New York Times reports on the imported coaches.
This is supposed to be Africa’s World Cup, but Africa’s teams, many on the verge of elimination, are still not entirely Africa’s teams.
Not with Sven-Goran Eriksson, the Swede who spawned a thousand tabloid headlines in England, coaching Ivory Coast despite not speaking French or any of the country’s indigenous languages.
Not with Lars Lagerback, another late recruit from Sweden, coaching Nigeria. Not with the French former star Paul Le Guen coaching Cameroon, and not with Carlos Alberto Parreira, the classy Brazilian, back in charge of South Africa.
Foreign coaches have been a fixture in African soccer since the beginning at the World Cup. In 1934, when Egypt became the first African nation to participate in the tournament, James McRae of Scotland was the manager. It took 36 years for another African team to participate, and when Morocco managed it, in 1970, the coach was Blagoje Vidinic of Yugoslavia.
But this is a deeply symbolic year and occasion, one that was supposed to underscore the possibilities of Africa and its present-day qualities. How inconvenient, then, that of the six African teams in the tournament, only Algeria is coached by one of its own: the 64-year-old Rabah Saadane.
“For my country, it’s symbolic, because Mr. Saadane is the man who qualified us for the World Cup,” said Madjid Bougherra, an Algerian defender. “It’s been 24 years since we qualified, and Mr. Saadane was the coach then, too. He is very respected in Algeria, and I think it gives a good image, the right image for Algeria to have an Algerian coach.”
For the other five African teams, it looks very much like a missed opportunity, and the situation, although more nuanced than it first appears and hardly new, remains a wellspring of continental angst.
“Let me put it this way,” Simaata Simaata, general secretary of the Zambia Football Coaches Association, told the BBC this year, “it’s like saying David Livingstone discovered the Victoria Falls. No, David Livingstone was the first European to see the Victoria Falls. There were already local people who knew where the mighty wonder of the world existed, and they were the local scouts who knew the terrain. That’s the way we view the contribution of foreign coaches.”
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