The fact that Ivory Coast hired a veteran French coach – Jean‑Louis Gasset – with no experience in African football before the Africa Cup of Nations, only to sack him after their miserable performance in the group stages and replace him with a former international player but novice manager, Emerse Faé, for their last‑16 game against Senegal speaks to the cocktail of incompetence and chaos that is Ivorian football.
Not even the pulsating, national morale-boosting penalty‑shootout win against Senegal on Monday, which sent the streets of Ivory Coast’s capital Yamoussoukro into a frenzy of jubilation into the early hours of Tuesday, can mask this fact. Managing the Elephants was an unexpected 40th birthday gift for Faé, given to him by FIF, the Ivorian football federation, on 24 January, leaving him with just five days of international management experience before a high‑pressure knockout game against the defending Afcon champions.
“It was quite challenging – it was very difficult,” Faé says, who took over as his side were given a lifeline by Morocco’s defeat of Zambia in their final group game.
“After our terrible [4-0] defeat to Equatorial Guinea, we had to regain our senses and tap into the reserves of the players … I was under great pressure. Senegal were the clear favourites. Before we started the match I knew we could face any situation. We tried to move [the game] in the way we planned and create opportunities for ourselves.”
The lack of fear with which the Ivorians took on the defending champions, despite going behind in the fourth minute, was in sharp contrast to their tepid performance in the group stages against Equatorial Guinea, which infuriated fans, leading to the destruction of property in the immediate environs of Abidjan’s Ebimpé Stadium.
How things have turned around. Going forward Faé is very clear of what he expects from his team. “I want players who wet their jerseys [with sweat], players who take their second chance and redeem themselves. I want to see an Ivory Coast team that represents the country and the people who live in it.”
The governance of Ivorian football – or the lack of it, as many in the west African country would say – under Yacine Idriss Diallo, the FIF president, has been subject to intense scrutiny and criticism.
Before Faé was surprisingly given the job Diallo, in a rather bizarre move, had approached the France Football Federation to see if he could hire Hervé Renard – the man that led the country to their second Afcon title in 2015 and now in charge of France’s women’s national team – to take charge of the Elephants for the remainder of the tournament.
Renard has been in Ivory Coast for the tournament. The FFF, not unsurprisingly, rejected Diallo’s request.
As Mamadou Gaye, a football analyst for SuperSport, the pan‑African pay-TV channel, asked: “How do you sack a coach during the tournament and expect the federation of another country to give you the coach that they employ on loan to you, for a major tournament? It is something that is beyond my comprehension and that of many people in the country.”
The public anger against Diallo in the run-up to the last-16 tie led to the head of FIF keeping a rather low profile. Diallo’s house, along with the FIF headquarters in Abidjan, were protected by armed guards during the group stages.
A major criticism against Diallo during this Afcon has been the alleged neglect of his primary job – ensuring that the national team is properly prepared – spending more time, instead, on his duties as a vice‑president of the tournament’s local organising committee.
Many claim that his neglect of his FIF duties also led to a deeply embarrassing situation of the country’s women’s national team being forced to pull out of the Paris 2024 Olympic qualifiers because of lack of funds, even when Ivory Coast has supposedly spent more than $1bn (£788m) in preparing to host this Cup of Nations. Diallo has said that a lack of government funding was to blame.
Yeo Martial, the Ivorian coach who led the country to its maiden Afcon title in 1992, has also been publicly critical of FIF, complaining on national TV that there has been no acknowledgment of his place in the country’s football history, in the events and activities planned by the organising committee for the Afcon.
A former Ivorian senior member of the CAF administration, with longstanding ties to the country’s football community and to high‑ranking people in government, who spoke under condition of anonymity, said he is not surprised by the mess in which Ivorian football currently finds itself.
“Many who are in football administration are not acting in the country’s primary interests,” he says. “They seem to be more concerned about how to enjoy the trappings of power than do the hard work of football development. But if we look at things critically this problem of leadership is not exclusive to Ivorian football. It is a problem that we can see across the entire African continent.”
With the hosts pulling a quarter‑final place out of the sharp jaws of humiliation and disgrace, however, the big question is whether what has been hitherto seen as a laughable pipe dream for Ivory Coast – a third Afcon title – is now realistic to contemplate again.
Should that happen, it would be completely in tune with the drama that has been an inextricable part of arguably the most exciting, unpredictable and open competition in this tournament’s storied history.
