Senegal coach Aliou Cisse is confident that an African team will someday win the Fifa World Cup.
Since the competition’s launch in 1930, no Africa team has won the title- with the continent’s best performance being a quarter-final finish in 1990 (Cameroon), 2002 (Senegal) and 2010 (Ghana).
Answering questions from journalists in a press conference ahead of his side’s 2018 World Cup opener against Poland, the 42-year-old claims that antecedents of African teams in the championship are indicators that they will someday break the jinx.
“I have the certainty that one day an African country will win the World Cup, But some 20-25 years ago, African teams came just to be a part of the World Cup,
Things have developed now. You’ll remember in 2002, Senegal, Nigeria, we’ve shown that we can do much more, we can participate and have excellent results, we just need to go to the next phase.
It takes time, we have realities that aren’t there is on other continents, But we have a lot of quality and I’m sure that one day, African teams will be able to win tournaments like Brazil and Germany.
We have no inferiority complex with European countries; you see lots of Africa players at major clubs.”
Nigeria, Senegal, Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt are Africa’s representatives in the ongoing 2018 edition holding in Russia – and so far none of the African Countries have been able to gain a point in the competition.
