Taking Senegalese Soccer to New Heights, With Pride and Style

DIAMNIADIO, Senegal — Standing on the sidelines of Senegal’s brand-new nationwide stadium, Aliou Cissé, the largest fan of his personal staff, waved his arms at 50,000 followers, exhorting them to cheer even louder, his signature dreadlocks bouncing on his shoulders.

Followers roared again, clapping and blowing their vuvuzelas at a extra deafening pitch. Minutes later, Senegal defeated its fiercest rival, Egypt, incomes a qualification for soccer’s World Cup, which begins this November in Qatar.

“Once we are collectively, Senegal wins,” a grinning Mr. Cissé, 46, mentioned at a postgame information convention. Or, as he likes to repeat in Wolof, one of many nation’s nationwide languages, “Mboloo Mooy gagner” — “Unity brings victory.”

If Senegal feels proud and patriotic nowadays, it’s thanks largely to its nationwide staff — and to Mr. Cissé, a former skilled participant who has reinvented Senegalese soccer and constructed what’s at present the most effective staff in Africa.

“The barometer of the Senegalese society right now is soccer,” Mr. Cissé mentioned in a current interview with The New York Occasions in Diamniadio, a newly constructed metropolis on the outskirts of Dakar the place the brand new stadium sits. “Individuals watch us play they usually’re proud to be Senegalese, proud to be African.”

Mr. Cissé led the squad that gained the Africa Cup of Nations earlier this 12 months, the nation’s first soccer title. In doing so, he proved to the Senegalese those that considered one of their very own may succeed the place nobody else had.

European managers have lengthy coached many African nationwide groups, together with Senegal’s, however that’s altering, a shift embodied by Mr. Cissé.

From Algeria to Zimbabwe, Sudan to Burkina Faso, a rising era of African managers are constructing a brand new teaching tradition on the continent. Sixteen groups now have native coaches, and the three sub-Saharan African groups going to Qatar later this 12 months — Cameroon, Ghana and Senegal — all have former nationwide gamers as managers.

“Increasingly skilled gamers on the continent wish to be coaches,” mentioned Ferdinand Coly, a former teammate of Mr. Cissé’s. “Native experience is gaining floor.”

Though Mr. Cissé maintains that European coaches have executed rather a lot for African groups, that period is fading.

Born within the southern Senegalese area of Casamance in 1976, Mr. Cissé moved to France when he was 9 and grew up within the suburbs of Paris, one of many world’s greatest swimming pools of soccer expertise.

His trajectory is much like many African gamers who had been raised in Europe or joined youth academies there. “After I was out, I used to be French, however at dwelling I used to be really Senegalese,” Mr. Cissé mentioned about talking Wolof and following the household’s customs whereas in France.

Mr. Cissé joined the youth academy of Lille, in northern France, at 14, and performed in French and English golf equipment within the Nineteen Nineties and 2000s, together with the French powerhouse Paris St.-Germain, Portsmouth and Birmingham Metropolis, which competed in England’s high league.

On the 2002 World Cup, he captained a Senegalese squad taking part in its first World Cup — one which shocked France, the world champions on the time, in a shock victory that many nonetheless consult with with heat nostalgia. Senegal reached the quarterfinals, the staff’s largest achievement to this point within the competitors.

As a coach, Mr. Cissé now appeals to each Senegalese gamers raised of their native nation, and to those that moved to France of their youth like him, constructing a bridge between the squad’s “locals” and its “binationals,” as they’re referred to among the many staff’s workers.

It has been an extended street to success. When Mr. Cissé took over the staff in 2015, Senegal had been performing poorly on the Africa Cup of Nations and had did not qualify for the final three World Cup editions. Mr. Cissé’s predecessors had been fired one after one other.

Seven years later, Mr. Cissé, nicknamed “El Tactico,” for his environment friendly however restrained method to the sport, will deliver Senegal to its third World Cup and his second one as a coach. The period when African groups had been “observing,” is over, he says, and one will win the coveted trophy at some point.

“Why not us?” he mentioned.

Régis Bogaert, a former French youth coach of Mr. Cissé’s at Lille and now his deputy on the Senegalese staff, mentioned Mr. Cissé had conveyed a way of mission to his gamers. “He’s making many individuals wish to be the subsequent Aliou Cissé in Senegal and in Africa,” Mr. Bogaert mentioned.

Soccer, a nationwide ardour, is in every single place in Senegal, whether or not within the youth academies nurturing future abilities, or on Dakar’s seashores, empty building websites and pitches dotting town’s corniche alongside the Atlantic Ocean.

“To be the coach of the nationwide staff right now is to be a politician,” mentioned Mr. Cissé, who typically repeats that he lives in Senegal and feels the nation’s stress each day, not like his gamers or the international coaches who reside overseas. “It’s about realizing the financial system, the tradition, the schooling and historical past of your nation.”

His humorousness and vogue tastes have additionally helped along with his recognition: Mr. Cissé typically wears shiny white sneakers and thick black sq. glasses, and he retains his dreadlocks below a New York Yankees or Crew Senegal cap, giving him the air of a cool father. He has 5 kids, whom he makes sound as difficult to handle because the nationwide staff.

If Mr. Cissé has shared Senegal’s largest successes, he has additionally skilled among the nation’s worst traumas. In 2002, he misplaced 11 kinfolk in a shipwreck that killed greater than 1,800 passengers off the coasts of Senegal and Gambia.

Senegal’s victory on the Africa Cup of Nations earlier this 12 months got here 20 years after Mr. Cissé missed a penalty within the ultimate of the identical event, depriving the staff of its first trophy again then — a reminiscence that lengthy haunted his nights, he mentioned.

Since then, Senegal has been having happier days on the pitch, and the nationwide pleasure surrounding the staff was on full show final month when Senegal defeated Egypt in a penalty shootout in its first recreation in Diamniadio’s stadium.

Some followers mentioned that they had slept exterior the stadium the evening earlier than to verify they obtained the most effective seats. Hours earlier than kickoff, hundreds extra lined as much as enter, the sounds of whistles and drums filling the air.

“It’s a fantastic day for Senegal,” mentioned Sally Diassy, a French-Senegalese 30-year-old who lives in France and mentioned she was visiting Senegal to assist her favourite staff.

The jubilation on show after the win echoed the triumphant return of the Senegalese gamers after they gained the Africa Cup of Nations in February. Tens of hundreds of followers greeted them as they paraded within the streets of Dakar. President Macky Sall rewarded the staff and Mr. Cissé’s workers with some land within the capital and in Diamniadio, together with about $83,000, an exorbitant sum that set off some minor protests in a rustic the place almost half of the inhabitants lives below the poverty line.

However some gamers have additionally given again: Sadio Mané, the staff’s star, has constructed a hospital in his native village. Kalidou Koulibaly, the captain, purchased ambulances for his father’s village.

“Gamers wish to be position fashions in their very own nation,” mentioned Salif Diallo, a veteran soccer journalist who has adopted Mr. Cissé’s profession as a participant and a coach. “This staff is altering the notion that Senegalese have of themselves.”

Those that know Mr. Cissé say that after he’s executed with the nationwide staff, he’ll wish to play a better position for his nation.

“I’ve tried to set an instance,” Mr. Cissé mentioned of his profession as each participant and coach. “If a Senegalese participant strikes to Birmingham or Montpelier or wherever I’ve performed tomorrow, I hope he shall be welcomed as a result of they’ll keep in mind that Aliou Cissé was an excellent man.”