MOSCOW: When Senegal scored their second goal against Poland, Aliou Cisse, dressed as usual in an immaculate black suit, lost all control of himself and fist-pumped while in mid-air, his dreadlocks dancing around in a celebration of their own.
Elsewhere, Twitter filled up with comments about his sense of fashion, his mannerisms and his general uniqueness. Of course, he is unique! Cisse is the only black manager at the ongoing World Cup.
For a tournament where some of the biggest superstars — Paul Pogba, Romelu Lukaku, Raheem Sterling, Sadio Mane — are black, it is pretty underwhelming that only one of the 32 coaches is of the same ethnicity. Even more disturbing is the fact that Cisse is only the ninth black manager to take a team to the World Cup. Let that sink in for a moment! Eighty-eight years. Twenty-one tournaments. Four hundred and sixty-one teams. Pele, Eusebio, Jairzinho, Marcel Desailly, Ronaldinho, Thierry Henry. And just nine black men in charge.
Given the abundance of ultra-talented black players they have produced over the last century, it is amazing that Brazil has never had a black manager in charge of a World Cup-bound squad. Didi was the first one, but not for his country — he had the chance to manage Peru in 1970. Francisco Maturana took Colombia to a couple of Cups in the 90s. Of the 21 World Cups so far, fourteen did not have a single black manager including, ironically, the first ever African World Cup in 2010.
It is far from a malaise that affects just the World Cups — all of Europe’s top five leagues have shown aversion towards employing black managers. A report by The Independent, earlier this month, spoke of how black managers in England were at a significant disadvantage compared to their white counterparts. “Since 2000, the proportion of black footballers playing for England has risen, but while 25 per cent of white players have been given a managerial job since retirement, that drops to just 10 per cent for black players,” it reads.
Perhaps a lot of it has to do with the historical stereotyping of black footballers, the favoured adjectives for them have been ‘fast’, ‘powerful’ or ‘athletic’ as compared to the ‘smart’, ‘clever’ and ‘cerebral’ white footballers. Peter Alegi’s African Soccerscapes talks of how this led to black footballers of the mid 20th century not being favoured for certain positions. The stereotypes, it would seem, have followed them off the pitch as well.
What is most unfortunate is that even African countries have been reluctant to trust their own to lead their teams to World Cups. Former Nigeria coach Stephen Keshi, was notoriously removed as Togo coach for the 2006 World Cup after he had a successful qualifying campaign. It took until 2002 for an African nation to finally have an African manager — Joseph Somo coached South Africa while Festus Onigbinde was manager of Nigeria. Since then, only three more names have been added to the list — Stephen Keshi (Nigeria) and Kwasi Appiah (Ghana) in 2014 and now Cisse for Senegal.
Cisse too is aware that he is treading a path that few others get a chance to walk on. “I am the only black coach in this World Cup. That is true,” he said. “But really these are debates that disturb me. Football is a universal sport and that the colour of your skin is of very little importance.“In European countries, in major clubs, you see lots of African players. We need African coaches for our continent to go ahead.”