Final fling for golden generation
The Cup of Nations two years ago in Angola was supposed to be the last chance for the Ivory Coast’s golden generation.
The likes of Didier Drogba, Kolo Toure, Aruna Dindane and Didier Zokora were ageing, while Salomon Kalou and Emmanuel Eboue, although both still in their 20s now, seemed almost to be dematerialising by the week as confidence ebbed through a combination of not playing and crowd frustration when they did.
They were bundled out in the quarter-final by Algeria, but two years later, as other giants collapsed in qualifying, they are expected once again to win a Cup of Nations. Even Arsene Wenger last week described them as “an incredible team and hot favourites”.
Angola was heartbreaking. After the gun attack on the Togo team on the way to Cabinda, where the group was based, Ivory Coast drew a non-event of an opening game 0-0 against Burkina Faso, but recovered to outplay Ghana in their second match, beating them 3-1.
They were the better side against Algeria in the quarter-final as well but, having gone 2-1 up in the 89th minute, conceded to Madjid Bougherra two minutes into injury time and, still stunned, to Hameur Bouazza three minutes into extra time.
As Algeria time-wasted disgracefully, Ivory Coast appeared dazed and barely mounted an attack, undone, as their coach Vahid Halilhodzic said, by “three minutes of lunacy”.
He, inevitably, was dismissed, all his planning was abandoned, and Ivory Coast, having been drawn in the toughest first-round group for the second World Cup running, were undermined by the appointment of Sven-Goran Eriksson. Whatever your thoughts on his managerial abilities, it’s surely never a good idea to replace a manager who has been with the team for 18 months in preparation for a tournament with one whose preparation time consisted of two friendlies.
With the appointment of the former Nancy and Toulon midfielder Francois Zahoui — an Ivorian, and thus part of the wider trend of West African nations turning to their own coaches rather than relying, as they have tended to do for more than 25 years, on foreigners — a measure of stability has returned.
And now the sense is that this time it really is the last chance, particularly with Egypt, Nigeria, Cameroon and South Africa all missing and Ghana weakened by the withdrawal of Kevin Prince-Boateng and the calf injury that means Asamoah Gyan enters the tournament with doubts about his fitness.
“This is the third time that people say we are favourites so I think 2012 will be the year of Côte d’Ivoire,” said Yaya Toure, reigning African Footballer of the Year.
“We have a fantastic squad and I think we have a chance of going far. After the losses we have had at the Cup of Nations, I believe the squad now has the experience and right mentality.”
Attitude is clearly a key theme in the Ivorian camp, and the suggestion is that it was complacency as much as anything else that cost them against Algeria, and perhaps even in the semi-final two years earlier when they were fancied to beat Egypt, who had beaten them in the final in 2006, but were bullied by Amr Zaki and beaten 4-1.
“We’ve got a big problem in Cote d’Ivoire,” said Zahoui. “We don’t respect opponents so we go to each cup of nations as favourites and come back disappointed.”
There other problem has been one that has afflicted much of West Africa for the past decade: a dearth of creativity. Ivory Coast have a powerful spine, with the likes of Yaya Toure, Zokora, Drogba and Kalou, but have often lacked guile and width.
Cheik Tiote adds to that midfield strength and Seydou Doumbia gives another option at centre-forward — which may lead to Kalou playing wide — but in terms of real flair and imagination the only real option is Gervinho.
He was much hyped two years ago as being the inventive wide man who would give Ivory Coast the dimension they’d been missing, but spent much of the tournament running down blind alleys and picking the wrong final ball.
Gervinho’s improved since then, but still wastes an awful lot of good positions — many of them, admittedly, that he himself has created. It feels wrong a player with a head shaped like a light-bulb should be so dim.
Still, they’re unbeaten in 14 months and they were quietly efficient last week in a 2-0 win over Tunisia, one of the clutch of teams recognised as potential winners of the tournament.
But Cote d’Ivoire have gone into tournaments looking good before, only to falter under the pressure; as the clock ticks, that pressure only becomes more intense.
