Africa Hosts the Cup but Imports the Coaches
By CHRISTOPHER CLAREY
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/22/sports/soccer/22coaches.htmlCAPE TOWN — 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.”
Back in 1975, Tanzania, bent on national self-reliance, barred foreign coaches, but that policy has long since been revoked, with Jan Paulsen of Denmark the latest to take over in Dar es Salaam next month.
Meanwhile, foreigners continue to make an impolite habit of parachuting in. Lagerback was hired in late February to coach Nigeria, well after the Super Eagles had qualified for the World Cup finals under Shaibu Amodu, a Nigerian. Lagerback, as the coach of the Swedish national team, had already failed in his first attempt to qualify with the Swedes.
Eriksson was hired even later. Back on the market after failing to convince as Mexico’s coach last year, Eriksson signed with Ivory Coast in late March after the team fired the Bosnian-born Frenchman Vahid Halilhodzic, who had smoothly negotiated qualifying but not this year’s African Cup of Nations, where Ivory Coast lost in the quarterfinals.
Eriksson is accustomed to operating outside his culture. He made his name as a club coach in Portugal and Italy, then became the first foreigner to coach England.
But he, like Lagerback, had never coached an African side. Nor had Le Guen.
So why the enduring fascination with the foreign soccer mind?
Hiring foreigners is, of course, not just an African trend. The Middle East is full of coaching outsiders, and at this World Cup, England is being coached by an Italian (Fabio Capello), Switzerland by a German (Ottmar Hitzfeld) and Chile by an Argentine (Marcelo Bielsa).
But the colonial legacy in Africa stirs up more powerful emotions when foreigners, particularly Europeans, take charge.
“I think a lot of it has to do with the colonial history of Africa, the sort of idea that you need white supervision for black achievement, and there’s the desire of Africans to reverse that,” said Peter Alegi, a professor at Michigan State who has written extensively on African soccer and is in South Africa on a Fulbright grant this year. “And so whenever there’s a white man in charge, it’s bound to create animosity, but I think one also has to think of the fact that there has been very little coaching development in Africa and sometimes the football associations select a European based on their record.”
Bougherra, the Algerian defender, said he thought the trend would shift soon. “A lot of great African players are starting to retire,” he said. “Some of them will become coaches.”
For now, more stability would be helpful. In the last decade, there have been 10 changes at the top in Cameroon, and South Africa has made 20 since being readmitted to international soccer in 1992.
“Look at the result when you bring in a coach from the outside, as many teams have, and it’s their local coaches who qualified the team,” said Zoheir Djelloul, Algeria’s assistant. “The performance on the field is often negative.”
Cameroon will not reach the second round. The Nigerians have been so unimpressive that they have become known as the Super Turkeys at home. It is perhaps no coincidence that the foreign coach with the best results here so far for Africa is Milovan Rajevac, a Serb who coaches Ghana and has been in place for nearly two years.
With ever more Africans making a living playing for European clubs, the idea of playing for a European coach at home is hardly a stretch. And African players, who have worked so hard against such long odds to get out of Africa, may have more innate respect for a foreign coach’s expertise.
But there is also something subtler at work as Philippe Troussier, the French coach nicknamed “le Sorcier Blanc,” or the White Witch Doctor, explained in Ian Hawkey’s book on the history of African soccer, “Feet of the Chameleon.”
“The foreign coach can be presented as a neutral man, who doesn’t have a favorite tribe or region,” Troussier said.
Not all the neutrals are Europeans. Brazilians, whose trademark style of play corresponds well with African inclinations, have also been a regular presence. Otto Glória coached Nigeria in the 1980s, and José Faria led Morocco at the 1986 World Cup, where it became the first African nation to reach the second round. Now South Africa, on the biggest occasion in its soccer history, has called on the well-traveled Parreira, who won the 1994 World Cup with Brazil, failed to repeat the trick in 2006 and will, barring something truly extraordinary, fail to win it this year, too.
Parreira has hard-earned expertise and had South Africans believing in him and his team after its opening draw with Mexico. But it still seems well past time that Africa, a continent that produces so many great players, starts producing — and rewarding — more great coaches.
A pity it could not do that in time for its own World Cup.