The Mirror Or The Picture At AFCON
The African Cup of Nations, or the Africa Nations Cup, or The African Cup of Nations. Or is it??
It is anything but African. At least, among head coaches!!!
Is this the mirror or the picture?
Out of 24 teams/nations, nine would come with the same local national team they had during the qualifiers, as the head coach.
Two (Cameroon had Belgium’s Marc Brys and Zambia had Israel’s Avram Grant) who, since last month, replaced their foreign coaches with locals in David Pagou and Moses Sichone, respectively.
Two have non-local coaches from fellow African countries.
These are Botswana with Morena Ramoreboli of South Africa and Sudan with Appia Kwesi from Ghana.
In total, 11 are coached by non-African locals.
Belgium has three: Mali-Tom Saintfiet, SA-Hugo Broos, Uganda-Paul Put.
France has three: Angola-Patrice Beaumelle; Congo – Sebastien Desabre, Nigeria – Eric Chelle.
The others have one coach each:
Argentina: Tanzania – Miguel Gamondi
Bosnia: Algeria – Vladimir Petkovic
Canada: Comoros – Stefano Cousin
Germany: Benin – Gernot Rohr
Romania: Zimbabwe – Marian Marimica
The following countries have kept their local Coaches from the Qualifiers
Burkina Faso – Brama Traore
Côte d’Ivoire – Emerson Fae
Egypt – Hossam Hassan
Equatorial Guinea – Juan Michael
Gabon – Thierry Mouyouma,
Morocco – Walid Regragui
Mozambique – Chiquinho Conde
Senegal – Pape Thiaw,
Tunisia – Sami Trabeli.
SA will have one head coach at the AFCON in Morena Ramoreboli, with Botswana.
Looking at these numbers, one gets a feeling that FIFA and/or UEFA, or whoever else, may not be very wrong in taking the AFCON for granted after all.
The very Africans who are the owners of the AFCON already take themselves for granted.
In no other continental Tournament will you find such a high percentage of coaches from outside that Confederation/continent, if at all.
Not in 2025.
Interestingly, of the nine countries that qualified directly to the World Cup from Africa, including the two who will not be at AFCON (Cape Verde’s Bubista and Ghana’s Otto Addo), who both have locals, only two are coached by foreigners.
Algeria is coached by a Bosnian, and South Africa is coached by a Belgian.
The other seven are coached by their own countryman:
Africa, unless things change as they often do after the AFCON, will have seven coaches at the next FIFA MWC. Even with the 10th team, this is unlikely to change.
By comparison on the depth of coaching quality, on the continent, Argentina comes not only as defending champions to the next MWC.
They will have no fewer than six coaches at the WC. Except for Brazil, the other five CONMEBOL Nations (Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, and Uruguay) who qualified directly are coached by Argentinians, and so is the co-host, the USA.
Unless and until we (Africans) believe and take ourselves seriously, no one will.
By Ziphozonke Dlangalala
