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World Cup 2010 profile - Ivory Coast - Drogba key for Eriksson’s Elephants
The West African country of Ivory Coast has a population of just over 20m, which makes it the 56th largest nation in the world. In the footballing world, it is ranked at number 27 in the FIFA World Rankings - a position that represents just how far they have come in recent years, as they were ranked at 75 in 2004. Part of the reason for this has been the emergence of several players currently plying their trade on the world’s greatest stages in Europe. As football grows, funding has grown as the government place extra emphasis on improving the nation’s sporting ability on a wider spectrum - with unemployment growing to a rate of around 40%, plans for the future are being slowly instigated.
The pinnacle of Ivorian domestic football is the Côte d'Ivoire Premier Division, which has been won by the same two teams for the last 24 years - ASEC Mimosas and Africa Sports National. Unfortunately, even though both sides compete in the Confederation of African Football Champions League, their uninspiring efforts intimate that Ivory Coast’s greatest talents are not playing for their domestic teams. As well as this, neither side influences the national team sufficiently in comparison to many other nations in the World Cup . Only two domestic-based players (Tiasse Kone of Africa Sports and Vincent Angban of Mimosas) have been selected for the national team in the past three years, a trend that is the result of players eloping to Europe in order to succeed on a bigger scale. Indeed, the squad for the 2010 Africa Cup of Nations, 95% of the team were playing their football in Europe.
Ivory Coast has competed in just one World Cup finals in their history - Germany 2006. Although they failed to progress from the ‘Group of Death’ (Argentina, Netherlands and Serbia and Montenegro), it was an important tournament for the Ivorians, as it marked their arrival on the world footballing scene. They have a similarly tough group this time round too, with Portugal, Brazil and North Korea making up Group G. To temper such a difficult string of games, their star players will have to set the group alight. The team has many players who are recognised in top leagues across Europe, such as Yaya Toure of Barcelona and Salomon Kalou of Chelsea, but much of their hope rests upon the shoulders of one man - Didier Drogba. The Chelsea striker has proved himself as one of the world’s best strikers since arriving in England and with him in their side, Ivory Coast always carry a potent attacking threat. His robust style of play gives the team an extra dimension when compared with the trickery of his club teammate Kalou. If Drogba is on form, he is almost guaranteed to score goals which could bring the Elephants success in the tournament.
Their progression through qualifying was almost flawless, drawing just one of their second group stage games and winning the other five - after both winning and drawing three in the initial group. An asset that will undeniably help them is their astute defending - they conceded only six goals overall in qualifying and, with players such as Kolo Toure and Guy Demel, they seem well equipped to try and stop Portugal and Brazil from progressing. As the majority of players reside in Europe, the temperatures in South Africa - normally just below 30 degrees Celsius in the day, but dropping quickly for evening matches - should pose no problems. And nor should the scale of the tournament - players such as Drogba and the Toure brothers are unlikely to be fazed by the magnitude of their task, and although Champions League finals are not on the same scale as the World Cup, such experience will stand them in good stead for the competition.
 Another with potentially crucial experience at the top of world football, is that of Sven-Goran Eriksson, who took the reins of the Elephants just two months ago, after previous occupant, Vahid Halilhodžic, was relieved of his duties following a poor Africa Cup of Nations showing. Few will need reminding of Eriksson’s impressive CV, but his inability to secure England a place past the quarter-finals of any major competition, led many questioning his tactics and attitude when approaching the business end of tournaments. His reputation following his England stint, sees many portrait him as a nearly man - the man whose adeptness at overcoming sides expected to be beaten cannot be argued, but when faced with sides of a similar stature to his own, his mantra seemed more faced to preventing, rather than beating. With such a short space of time to get his squad up to speed, and into his methods, the Swede’s appointment may well prove detriment to the country’s World Cup ambitions.
Aside from goalkeeper Boubacar Barry, the team does not have any alerting weaknesses and their style of play on occasions mimics that of Chelsea - much of the play revolves around star player Drogba and nothing is too fancy or intricate. There are no false pretences behind this team - it is built from the back and is not particularly fluent. Under their previous regime, they seemed to be lacking in any real ideas of what their Coach expected from them and as a result, their tactics were ever-changing. It’s a big ask for Eriksson but if there’s one crumb of comfort, he can at least call upon the favourite son of Ivorian football, Didier Drogba - who, on his day, can upset any side in the world.
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