The struggle of African coaches

Ever since South Africa was awarded the 2010 World Cup, the organisers' oft-repeated desire has been for a pan-African World Cup.

• On the coaching front, they are going to be disappointed because Algerian Rabah Saadane will stick out like a sore thumb in June as the only African coach among the continent’s six finalists.

  It would have been two but Nigeria’s Shaibu Amodu was forced out after the Nations Cup earlier this year. We can also safely predict that the Ivory Coast’s new coach won’t be African, with Mark Hughes, Sven-Goran Eriksson and Bernd Schuster apparently the three main contenders.

• A look at Africa’s World Cup history, not to mention tradition, should have prepared us for such a reality.
• Of the 34 African teams that will have contested the World Cup come June, 24 will have been led by a foreigner.
• If you want to break that down, nine sides will have been led by a Frenchman, five by a Yugoslav-born coach, two apiece by a German and a Brazilian and the rest by a Scot, Dutchman, Russian, Franco-Pole and Swede.
• The 24th looks like being either a Welshman, Swede or German.

  With no African having ever taken his nation into the World Cup second round, these foreign appointments look set to continue – even if Saadane achieves the unexpected against Slovenia, England and the United States in Group C.

  Saadane almost helped create history back in the early 1980s. The experienced 63-year-old, who led Algeria at their last finals in 1986, worked as an assistant to both Mahieddinne Khalef and Rachid Mekloufi in 1982, which is when Africa’s coaching dreams received a heavy blow.

• Had the infamous ‘Shame of Gijon’ match between Austria and West Germany been played differently, an African coaching team may have led their nation out of the group stages for the one and so far only time.

  Whether that would have changed anything is a moot point, especially since local coaches have been fighting for recognition ever since football was introduced to Africa by European missionaries, servicemen and the like.

• “The missionaries in Nigeria weren’t coaches or players themselves, but they became experts because they knew the game in England,” says Nigeria’s Segun Odegbami, who won the 1980 Nations Cup, albeit under a Brazilian coach. “We depended on them. Later, a Father Slattery, though just a low-standard referee back home, became Nigeria coach.”

  In time, more professional coaches arrived, and Scotland’s James McRea, a player with West Ham and Manchester United, unwittingly set the tone for Africa’s World Cup outings when leading Egypt at the continent’s maiden finals in 1934.

• Fans had to wait another 44 years for Africa’s first World Cup coach, with Abdelmajid Chetali leading Tunisia to the continent’s first finals win – a 3-1 defeat of Mexico.
• While North African federations have handed the reins to a compatriot on more than half their 13 World Cup visits, those in sub-Sahara have proved mightily reluctant. It wasn’t until 2002 that a sub-Saharan nation first travelled to the finals with their own coach, as two buses came along at once – Festus Onigbinde driving Nigeria, Jomo Sono at the helm for South Africa.
• It didn’t help that, while Nigeria and South Africa floundered, little-fancied Senegal, guided by Frenchman Bruno Metsu, became the second African nation to reach the quarter-finals.
• Cameroon’s Roger Milla-led side had been the first in 1990, under the tutelage of little-known Russian Valery Nepomniachi, and to this day the Indomitable Lions have never been led by a Cameroonian at the World Cup.
• This is despite winning the 2000 Olympics with a local man, Jean-Paul Akono guiding his team to success over a Spain side boasting Xavi, Carles Puyol et al in Sydney.
• “We’ve won world titles at U17, U20 and U23 level under local coaches but that’s not being recognised,” laments former South Africa coach Trott Moloto. “Having one African coach here for the World Cup indicates the lack of confidence our people have in our own people – it’s very negative.”

  Especially when considering that five of Africa’s six U17 or U20 World Cup wins were won by African coaches (only two of whom ever graduated to a full-time senior role), while Sellas Tetteh’s reward for making Ghana U20 world champions last year is a post with Rwanda, which is all well and good but he was probably expecting more.

• As recently witnessed in Nigeria, a local’s path to the top is incredibly fraught. Despite achieving his set targets of World Cup qualification and the 2010 Nations Cup semi-finals, Amodu was still dismissed for the unconvincing nature of his performances.
• In his place came a man who has never coached in Africa, who has yet to meet his players but upon whom a great deal is expected – if only for five months before either Lars Lagerback cuts his losses or the Nigerian federation does.

  What the Swede does have though is top-level European experience – and that’s what many African federations are after, believing that superior innovations, tactics and discipline lie outside the continent (don’t mention Berti Vogts to Nigerian fans).

• So too, we’re often told, a perceived imperviousness to any tribal or shady influences (e.g. putting players in a national team simply so as to inflate their transfer fee).

  In truth, it’s a massive topic with many pros and cons, one which polarises opinion and one which will always be fiercely debated across the continent.

• But one certainty is that various African coaches will watch with envy as Serbia’s Milovan Rajevac leads Ghana, Frenchman Paul Le Guen, who led Lyon to three straight titles, handles Cameroon and Brazil’s 1994 World Cup-winning coach Carlos Alberto Parreira guides hosts South Africa.

  South Africa’s FA has promised that once the World Cup is over, a local man will take over – with SuperSport Utd coach Gavin Hunt heavily tipped for the job – but that’s only after the finals of course.

• “African administrators believe local coaches are only good for a Nations Cup, not the World Cup,” adds Moloto.

  Like so many African federations, South Africa wanted a man with international experience to lead them in June but this is a classic chicken-and-egg case, for how can these coaches gain such experience or show their worth when so few are given the chance (or indeed the right support)?

  And, tongue-firmly-in-cheek, has anyone ever told them that no country has won the World Cup with an expatriate coach?