2024-01-09 19:34:19
From our correspondent in Senegal – If Senegal multiplies the victories with its selections of players (CAN 2022, CHAN 2023, CAN U20 and U17 2023), its clubs are struggling in continental competitions. The fault is a model entirely focused on the training and export of players to the detriment of the competitiveness of local teams. CAN 2024 is further proof of this: the 27 Lions of Teranga selected all play outside Europe on a daily basis. Report on this Senegalese paradox.
Published on: 01/09/2024 – 6:34 p.m. Modified on: 01/09/2024 – 6:38 p.m.
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The atmosphere is peaceful within the Diambars Institute in Saly, one of the leading football academies in Senegal. On this Sunday, January 7, the U15s – players under 15 years old – at the training center are quietly following their Arabic course. At the same time, the final adjustments are being made by the first team staff before leaving for Dakar where Diambars faces Guédiawaye FC in a match counting for the 11th day of Senegalese Ligue 1.
A few days before CAN 2024 which opens on Saturday January 13 in Ivory Coast, the local championship is continuing its course. And the national selection is a source of pride for the Diambars Institute, where three players selected to represent the Lions of Teranga have passed: Idrissa Gana Gueye, Pathé Ciss and Bamba Dieng. The academy is a perfect illustration of the new face of Senegalese football, which trains a plethora of talents destined for abroad. A football which is going through a prosperous period, established as a model on the continent since it has won five of the last six men’s competitions organized by CAF: CAN 2022, CHAN 2023, CAN U20 and U17 2023 as well as the CAN Beach soccer 2022.
Idrissa Gana Gueye and Bamba Dieng, two Senegalese football stars trained by Diambars © Élimane Ndao, France 24
“Made in France” en 2002
Makane, the team steward, places his personal belongings on the team bus half an hour before departure for the match in Dakar. This former Saly Sport Club has been at the Diambars institute for 5 years. A fine connoisseur of Senegalese football, he finds it obvious that the national selection is made up of 100% players playing outside the country.
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“During the 2022 World Cup, before the match between Senegal and France, France Football magazine wrote an article entitled ‘Made in France’, referring to the fact that the majority of Senegalese players at the time were playing in France”, he recalls.
Twenty-two years later, the trend has not changed. “We are used to seeing a majority of expatriate players in the selection. I don’t see anything wrong with that. That’s also what allowed us to have all these victories. The players who play here, in Senegal, don’t “do not yet have the level of those who play in Europe. And Senegal is not an exception. Many other selections also mainly use players playing in Europe,” argues Makane.
In the hall of the Institute’s administrative building, Pape Ibrahima Faye, better known under the pseudonym PIF, comes to meet us. The assistant coach of the Diambars first team, a former footballer, is himself the father of a young player playing in Europe. His son, Ibrahima Faye, trained by Diambars, has been a player for BK Häcken for several months, a club playing in the first division of the Swedish championship.
Diambars’ first team in 2022-2023 © Elimane Ndao, France 24
“Most of the players who excel in Europe, apart from dual nationals, were first trained in Senegal,” puts PIF into perspective. For him, academies like Diambars and Génération Foot, the other Senegalese flagship, are engines that have allowed Senegal to dominate African football.
Clubs lagging behind
Senegalese supremacy on the continent, however, stops at the national selections. For the clubs, it’s crossing the desert. Over the past decade, only Teungueth FC, a club from the Dakar suburbs, has managed to pass the qualifiers and qualify for the group stage of the African Champions League in 2021. Senegalese clubs are very often knocked out in the first round of the two major African competitions in the category. Distressing performances that Pape Ibrahima Faye regrets.
Pape Ibrahima Faye, trainer at the Diambars Institute, and father of a professional footballer © Elimane Ndao, France 24
“For our clubs to win, we must manage to keep our best players for three or four seasons, before letting them go to Europe,” recommends PIF. “The example of Egypt is there. In Egypt, for a time, players only left the country at the age of 27. Egyptian talents benefited local clubs. The example of Almighty Mazembe in Congo also shows it. They have enough means to keep their players away from European covetousness. A player from Mazembe can pay 10 players from the Senegalese championship.”
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An opinion shared by sports journalist Cheikh Diop Ndiaye, from the Senegalese press group E-media. For him, Senegalese football is structured to favor selection to the detriment of clubs, which lack the financial means to compete with the big African teams. Crossed in the press box during the last friendly match of the Lions before the CAN in the brand new Abdoulaye Wade stadium in Diamniadio, the man with the dreadlocks discusses the subject with his colleagues.
Cheikh Diop Ndiaye, sports journalist © Elimane Ndao, France 24
“Elsewhere on the continent, they are large investors who allow clubs to be competitive. In Senegal, there are some who are trying to do so, such as investors Babacar Ndiaye with Teungueth FC and Cheikh Seck with Jaraaf de Dakar, but it is still timid. The clubs do not have the objective of raising the level of the local championship and establishing themselves in Africa, but of training players and reselling them,” he analyzes.
In the opinion of the specialists interviewed, Senegal can develop a more homogeneous football, which wins both at club and national level. The victory of the Lions in 2023 during the last African Nations Championship, the CAF competition which brings together the African selections with players playing only in their countries, demonstrated it: there is a large pool of quality players in the Senegal. It remains to keep them in local clubs to establish themselves on a continental scale.
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