Belgian club Beveren first acted as the gateway to Europe but now, though the majority of the Ivory Coast squad ply their trade in Le Championnat, their leading lights can be found in all the major leagues, furnishing the squad with invaluable big match experience.
The list of ASEC alumni include Arsenal duo Kolo Toure and Emmanuel Eboue, Aruna Dindane, Yaya Toure (Kolo’s brother), another pair of brothers in Bonaventure and Salomon Kalou — the latter who failed in gaining the Dutch citizenship that could have led to the intriguing possibility of the pair facing each other in a group game this summer — and St Etienne playmaker Didier Zokora, and it is these players who form the core of the side.
Dindane, a quick-footed, skilful player with a penchant for dribbling, will form a formidable strike partnership with the more agricultural battering-ram style of Chelsea’s Didier Drogba.
Between them they plundered 16 goals in qualifying. Dindane’s club Lens and the English champions have seen both players improve this season. Bakary Kone and Arouna Kone, though not of the standard of the first pick pair, offer back-up that the other African qualifiers will cast covetous eyes at. In central midfield, too, the Elephants are blessed. Paris St Germain playmaker Bonaventure Kalou and erstwhile Manchester United target Zokora epitomise the modern midfield player, capable of rugged ball-winning as well as launching high tempo attacks.
The fast emerging talent of Yaya Toure, tipped to achieve even greater things than his brother, adds further to the talent but the similar playing styles of the three presents something of a balance problem.
Whilst reluctant to do so, Kalou has been employed on the right wing in recent matches, thanks to his advantage of speed over the others, but a lack of natural width may prove problematic when trying to unlock top level European and South American defences.
One solution is the use of attacking full-backs in the form of Arthur Boka — dubbed in some hyperbolic quarters as the Ivory Coast’s answer to Roberto Carlos — and Eboue, who has been a revelation since injuries forced a quicker than expected assimilation into the Arsenal rearguard.
The job of ensuring that the sum of the team’s performance proves, as it will need to, greater even than the sum of these gifted parts falls to the wise, steadying hand of Frenchman Henri Michel. This will be his fourth crack at the ultimate prize with a fourth different country.
After taking Michel Platini’s France to the semifinals in 1986, Michel then led Cameroon (1994) and Morocco (1998) on less successful jaunts.
Once branded by Eric Cantona as ‘one of the world’s most incompetent coaches’ his record and longevity in the game suggests otherwise and his experience will be a major boon for a side for whom Germany will be a relative step into the unknown.
Ivory Coast’s recent history is one blighted by the deep scars of a bloody civil war that has yet to be resolved. The team’s success led to a temporary laying down of arms and managed, for an all too brief moment, to unite the warring factions in celebration.
President Zogbo Seri even went as far as addressing a crowd that had taken to the streets, declaring: ‘Our players have decreed the end of the war. The time for reconciliation has come.’
As well as to the hope of peace, securing a trip to Germany was also dedicated to Mama Ouattara, the coach of the national youth team and assistant coach to the full side who had collapsed and died during training in June 2004.
The Elephants undoubtedly have the potential to go on and achieve great things, as their stunning run to the final of this year’s African Nations Cup aptly demonstrated. The production line of talent has produced a side set to peak this year and has won them plaudits from many experts in the game.
‘If Ivory Coast can get out of their group,’ predicted German legend Franz Beckenbauer, ‘I can see them getting all the way to the final.’
