After a tumultuous few years, El-Hadji Diouf’s international career is now back on track and he has set his sights on the 2010 FIFA World Cup™ finals in South Africa. That would mark a return to the stage where Diouf shot to prominence in 2002, when, after scoring eight times in five qualifying games to secure the Africa Cup of Nations finalists a place in the FIFA World Cup™ finals for the first time, he played in all five Senegal games in the Far East before a quarter-final defeat by Turkey. The dust had hardly settled before things started going awry and Diouf soon threatened to quit international football when Bruno Metsu resigned as the coach of theTeranga Lions.
A couple of years later he was kicked out of the Senegal team ahead of a World Cup qualifier in Liberia after being spotted among nightclub revellers. “He’s a professional and should know the team rules, which demand rigour, discipline and punctuality,” said Senegal’s French coach Guy Stephan.
Diouf was banned by the Senegalese FA for his nocturnal indiscretions and then copped another four-game ban following his side’s ill-tempered quarter-final defeat by Tunisia at the 2004 Africa Cup of Nations when Diouf had a running feud with referee Ali Bujsaim. In October 2007, Senegal’s captain announced he would no longer play international football after becoming fed up with organisational problems but he quickly returned to the fold to spearhead his country’s FIFA World Cup™ qualifying campaign. Then, during their bid to win the Africa Cup of Nations for the first time in Ghana, the skipper failed to lead by example and was again caught in a Kumasi nightclub with midfielder Ousmane Ndoye and goalkeeper Tony Sylva. Their conduct prompted manager Henri Kasperczak to resign almost immediately and new manager Lamine Ndiaye dropped the trio as Senegal crashed out of the competition.
Now, a more mature Diouf is back on the straight and narrow and is spearheading his country’s FIFA World Cup™ campaign. “Internationally, things are going well,” he told FIFA magazine. “We are playing in the World Cup qualifying, we are top of the table and I am the top scorer. There were problems in the past, but they were a long time ago. It’s different now, though, and hopefully we will be at the next World Cup finals. I’m very happy for myself that I’ve scored a few goals and I like to bring my experience to help the team.”
El-Hadji Diouf
Full name: El-Hadji Ousseynou Diouf
Born: 15 January 1981 in Dakar (Senegal)
Nationality: Senegalese
Height: 1.82m
Weight: 75kg
Position: Striker
Career as a player: 1998-1999: Sochaux. 1999-2000: Rennes. 2000-2002: Lens. 2002-2004: Liverpool. 2004-2005: Bolton Wanderers (on loan from Liverpool). 2005-2008: Bolton Wanderers. Since 28 July 2008: Sunderiand.
Honours as a player: African Footballer of the Year in 2002. Member of the 2002 FIFA Worid Cup™ All-Star team. 2002 Africa Cup of Nations runner-up. 2003 English League Cup winner. In 2004, he was named in the FIFA 100, a list of the 125 greatest living footballers selected by Pele. 41 caps and 16 goals for Senegal.
Miscellaneous: He is married with one child and another on the way and they figure prominently in Diouf’s collection of jewellery. “My medallion is made out of diamonds and it bears the names of my family – my mum, my wife and my daughter,” he says. Diouf is also proud of his outlandish dress sense. “My Sunderland team-mate Pascal Chimbonda doesn’t compare to me. I am a fashion victim and Pascal is a victim. Look at me, what’s the problem?” He is launching a monthly sports newspaper in Senegal called Eleven Star.
A thorn in the side
El-Hadji Diouf thrives on being the player that everyone loves to hate, insisting he would not want it to be any other way. However, beneath the Senegalese striker’s thick-skinned demeanour and the medallions amid his expensive jewellery, there lurks a heart of gold.
Diouf was just 15 years old when he left West Africa for France after being spotted by Sochaux scouts, but it was not long before he started upsetting people when he helped stun a whole nation. After furthering his football education at Sochaux, Rennes and Lens, Diouf bit the hand that fed him in the 2002 FIFA World Cup finals with a man-of-the-match display for the Senegal side that pulled off a sensational victory over reigning champions France in Seoul. The 21-year-old African Footballer of the Year’s endeavours earned him a £10-million move to Liverpool after manager Gerard Houllier chose against signing on-loan striker Nicolas Anelka.
With Liverpool languishing in Manchester United’s shadow, Diouf’s ability to play as an out-and-out striker or as a right-sided midfielder combining strength, pace and quick-thinking were seen as the ideal way to invigorate an attack that had become too reliant on England forwards Emile Heskey and Michael Owen. Unfortunately, though, Diouf failed to live up to the expectations generated by his FIFA World Cup™ exploits and after an explosive start when he scored twice on his Anfield debut in a 3-0 win over Southampton, he managed just one more Premier League goal throughout the whole 2002-2003 season.
BANNED BY UEFA
During the next campaign, things went from bad to worse for Diouf as he became the first Liverpool No. 9 in more than 50 years to fail to score a goal in a season, his barren run spanning 33 games and 14 months. Although he helped Liverpool beat Manchester United in the 2003 League Cup final, Diouf’s spell there was overshadowed by an unsavoury incident during a UEFA Cup tie against Celtic In Glasgow when he spat at a fan. He was banned by UEFA for two matches for that moment of madness and fined two weeks’ wages by his club. After issuing a public apology, he also handed over £60,000 to charity. He was also charged with assault in court, pleaded guilty and was fined another £5,000. It is said that leading Liverpool players such as Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher were unimpressed with Diouf and he was soon deemed surplus to requirements by new boss Rafael Benitez.
That led to a loan deal at Bolton Wanderers for a season that eventually
led to a permanent deal, but controversy continued to stalk the forward. He was hit with a three-game ban following another unsavoury incident when he spat at Arjan de Zeeuw during a clash at Portsmouth. And then Diouf appeared in court to plead guilty to a charge of reckless behaviour after being accused of spitting at an 11-year-old boy at Middlesbrough. Plus, a British court banned Diouf from driving for 12 months when he was found guilty of a drink-driving offence after he had been out drinking champagne to celebrate an English Premier League win for Bolton.
Diouf, though, had already felt the long arm of the law, having ended up with a criminal record after crashing a Rennes team-mate’s car when driving without a licence as the teenager gained a reputation as a patty animal, which ptompted his move to Lens. “It’s true, I used to be a bit of a bad boy,” he once said. “But that has never stopped me succeeding wherever I have been. In any case, I change my character for nobody.”
It was not all bad, though, as Diouf emerged as a crowd favorite with Bolton under then manager Sam Allardyce and helped the unfashionable club secure a place in the UEFA Cup for the first time in its history. To top it all, he then scored Bolton’s first-ever goal in European competition in a 2-1 win against Lokomotiv Plovdiv at the Reehok Stadium in 2005.
“THE DIOUFY FOUNDATION”
However, Diouf became disillusioned with life at Bolton and after scoring the goal that ensured the Trotters’ remarkable escape from relegation, he looked for pastures new. Despite his reputation – indeed because of it – he found no shortage of clubs seeking his services. In the end, after rejecting the advances of
Portsmouth and Paris Saint-Germain, Diouf opted to sign a four-year deal at Sunderland, whose manager Roy Keane commented: “El-Hadji has always been the kind of player opposition teams and supporters love to hate, a thorn in the side. That’s why we’re delighted to now have him in our squad. I don’t care what he wears, drives or who he sleeps with. In the dressing room the lads will be thinking ‘I’m glad he’s next to me’.”
From Diouf’s perspective, Keane’s comments represented the ultimate back-handed compliment. “All I care about is succeeding on the pitch,” Diouf said. “I am a bad loser just like Roy Keane and I want to play football. We used to fight when Liverpool faced Manchester United. I know opposition supporters like to hate me but I’m totally comfortable with that. It’s because they know what I’m capable of and that inspires me. Anyway, opposing fans never boo a bad player.”
In contrast to his nasty and ostentatious side, Diouf has also proved he is a caring, considerate soul and has set up a charity to help disadvantaged children in Senegal and England called “The Dioufy Foundation” whose slogan is “Give The Kids A Chance”. Diouf established the charity with his close friend, hip-hop artist Akon. “Me and Akon do everything together because we grew up together,” Diouf told reporters in Sunderland. “We are the two most famous people in Senegal right now and we do things together because we are so lucky. We earn good money and like to help people back home. Some teams over in Senegal don’t have shirts, don’t have boots and we are helping them overcome that.”
Bastian Schweinsteiger
Born: 1 August 1984 in Kolbermoor (Germany)
Nationality: German
Position: Midfielder
Height: 1.83m
Weight: 79kg
Clubs: 1990-1992: FV Oberaudorf. 1992-1998: TSV 1860 Rosenheim. Since 1 July 1998: Bayern Munich.
Honours: German league champion 2003, 2005, 2006 and 2008. German cup winner 2003, 2005, 2006 and 2008. Third place at the 2006 FIFA World Cup™. Runner-up at EURO 2008. 57 appearances for Germany, 16 goals.
From a “nice lad” to a world-class star?
Bastian Schweinsteiger is currently riding high with the fans of both Germany and German giants Bayern Munich, but will the crowd’s hero one day blossom into a top-class player?
The 2008-2009 Bundesliga season was just over 11 minutes old when the sequel to one of the summers success stories began. Once again, a player broke down the left flank and crossed low into the opponent’s penalty area, and once again a blond team-mate stole in from the opposite wing to fire home. The two assists t EURO 2008 had both come from Lukas Podolski, but this time the man in question was Ze Roberto. All three chances were expertly converted by the same player: Bastian Schweinsteiger.
In the quarter-finals of the European Championship, Schweinsteiger had displayed a turn of pace that few knew he actually possessed to burst from the right wing and into the Portuguese penalty area before sliding in to give Germany a 1-0 lead in the 22nd minute. Then, four days later, he repeated the trick, once again in Basle, by stealing in at the near post to divert a low Podolski cross into the far corner with a deft flick of his right foot. That particular equaliser, in the 26lh minute of the semi-final against Turkey, was a masterclass in technique. He followed that up just over four weeks later, during Bayern Munich’s first home game if the new season, with a goal straight ,out of the same textbook, smashing
the ball home to give Bayern an early lead over Hamburg. This time, Bayern’s number 31 was on the edge of the penalty area when he shifted his body weight — all 79 kilograms of it – to the left before emphatically drilling the ball on the half-volley back in the direction it came from and straight into the Hamburg nee.
A BEAUTIFUL ILLUSION
People are wondering whether the Schweinsteiger story will continue in the same vein. Will he, unlike in 2006, be able to learn from the events of a major tournament, which are so different to league football? In 2006 it was the FIFA World Cup™, and in 2008 it was the European Championship. Schweinsteiger also had his moments at the 2006 FIFA World Cup™ in Germany, most notably in the play-off for third place when his two superb goals against Portugal helped to gloss over a tournament in which he had, until then, been a disappointment. The German coach at the time, Jurgen Klinsmann, had substituted him in both the round of 16 and the quarter-final, and he had even consigned him to the bench for the start of the semi-final
With their youthful frivolity and “cheeky chappy” comments, Schweinsteiger and Podolski were the undoubted stars of the “Summer Fairytale” movie of the FIFA
World Cup, but the two best friends almost seemed to stay in their little fantasy world. Schweinsteiger in particular continued to live in that summer fairytale. The beautiful illusion created by the film had obviously had an effect on him even though his performances in 2006 had been decidedly average at best. Unsure of a starting place at Bayern, Schweinsteiger was all of a sudden a key member of the German team, with new coach Joachim Low selecting him 16 times between the end of the FIFA World Cup™ and the start of EURO 2008. Only injuries prevented Schweinsteiger from playing in a further five games, and when a German second string took to the field for a friendly match, Schweinsteiger was obviously no longer anywhere to be seen.
CLEVER SELF-PROMOTION
Small wonder, then, that Low’s decision to banish Schweinsteiger to the bench for the start of Germany’s EURO 2008 campaign did not sit comfortably with the players own image of himself. And then, when Schweinsteiger took to the pitch in the second game to try and prove his boss wrong, his emotions got the better of him and he recklessly reacted to a challenge by pushing Croatia’s Leko to the floor. The result was a red card and a suspension that kept him out of the Austria match. Then came Schweinsteiger’s two tours de force as Germany eliminated both Portugal and Turkey in the knockout stages before the sporting show came to an end with a 1-0 defeat at the hands of Spain in the final. Off the field, however, it continued, just as it had throughout the entire tournament. Schweinsceiger had been in the headlines primarily due to his girlfriend Sarah, a model with long, flowing blonde locks who had cleverly used her time in the Alpine states of Austria and Switzerland to promote herself and take her place as the most famous of all German “WAGs”. The young couple have even been called “the Beckhams of Munich”.
Yet although Schweinsteiger has posed for fashion and style magazines and has recently been a familiar sight at some of Munich’s most fashionable addresses, the people who know him best describe him as a down-to-earth and somewhat naive young man who is only searching for harmony and family comfort. “Bastian is a nice lad,” says Uli Hoeness. Bayern Munich’s general manager has always been a strict but honest and fatherly figure to Schweinsteiger, whom he describes as “totally OK”.
In early September, when a Russian journalist asked Schweinsteiger about Russia’s prospects ahead of their match in Germany on 11 October 2008, the
midfielder was actually stumped for a reply. “I can’t do that to you. After all, you’ve come so far,” he said in a kindly, natural and yet unintentionally comic reply.
Schweinsteiger can, however, also come across as brusque, curt and aloof. In those moments, he can go from being a young, kindly, rascal-like, smiling favourite of teenage girls – the star that he rightly is given the fact that he has already racked up nearly 60 German caps by the age of 24 – into a moody diva with star allures that his age and performances to date hardly justify. He is also known for his tendency to be sensitive towards and offended by critical comments about below-par performances. Schweinsteiger believes that such criticism is unwarranted and has talked about “a lack of respect”. When he talks in general terms about Germany’s alleged tendency to over-criticise, his comments do sound a little precocious.
ZIGZAG PATH
In recent: years, Hoeness has been kind and lenient in his description of Schweinsteiger as “someone in search of something”. He knows that Schweinsteiger is a young footballer who for a long time did not have the correct bearings. He also knew that he had often chosen the
wrong people as part of his entourage. Schweinsteiger has, for example, on more than one occasion quickly dispensed with the services of advisers … decisions that have cost him a small fortune. And then in another harmless example of the zigzag path that his career has followed, in early August, Schweinsteiger announced that he wanted to take up Bayern’s new offer of further education to improve his English. By the end of August, it was his Italian. In both instances, he was quick to stress that people should to jump to conclusions as to his future career intentions.
Yet that particular question is becoming all the more pertinent because Schweinsteiger, who has been at Bayern since 1998, is currently in his seventh Bundesliga season and his contract is set to expire on 30 June 2009. Bayern usually manage to tie their top performers and shooting stars down to extended, long-term contracts, but so far they have not done so with Schweinsteiger. In the run-up to EURO 2008, Bayern even started to consider a future without him and there was talk about a possible swap deal with Arsenal’s Alexander Hleb, who has since moved to Barcelona. In the end, Arsenal declined the offer. Then, all of a sudden, Schweinsteiger propelled himself back into the headlines with his perfotmances against Portugal and Turkey, promptly giving Bayern’s bosses a new headache. Would they really be able to explain to their fans why they had sold such a valuable player? Or why they had sold one of their favourite sons? When Bayern’s stadium announcer at the Allianz Arena in Munich reads out the line-ups before every home game and gets to “number 31 … Bastian …”, Schweinsteiger is the only player for whom the crowd add “Football God!” after bellowing his surname.
“I AM MORE EFFECTIVE NOW”
Schweinsteiger could well be the next in a long line of famous homegrown Bayern players that includes the likes of Franz Beckenbauer, Sepp Maier, Paul Breitner and Klaus Augenthaler … but is he good enough? The Bayern hierarchy still has its doubts. In the wake of captain Oliver Kahn’s retirement, the issue of his successor was discussed both inside and outside the club, but Schweinsteiger’s name was never mentioned. Philipp Lahm, jus: one year older than Schweinsteiger, was one of the main candidates, mainly because the defender is generally said to be more mature and more developed on a personal level. One of Bayern’s main priorities was to persuade Lahm to extend his contract until 2012, which he was happy to do. In Schweinsteiger’s case, however, Hoeness made his feelings clear when he said that the midfielder’s performances against Portugal and Turkey had set the bar for his future, which would be discussed soon.
Schweinsteiger obviously understood and took that comment to heart. He is quick to reject the frankly understandable theory that his development has slowed down and that he did not improve as a player between the two matches against Portugal In 2006 and 2008 by pointing to the number of appearances and medals he now has under his belt at Bayern, even though other players have clearly been the main architects of the club’s recent success. That said, Schweinsteiger has shown a new side to himself in the 2008-2009 season. He has, to a certain extent, grasped the opportunity presented to him by the injuries sustained by Franck Ribery and Hamit Altintop. “I am more effective now,” he claims. Prior to this season, Schweinsteiger had only scored 15 goals in 153 Bundesliga appearances, including one paltry goal in the 2007-2008 season – a decidedly disappointing return for an attacking midfielder. He did, however, score twice in the first three games of the new season, including one from the penalty spot. Yet more evidence of the new Bastian Schweinsteiger …
HONOURED TO BE CAPTAIN
In Germany’s first match after EURO 2008, a friendly against Belgium, Schweinsteiger was even given the black-red-and-gold captain’s armband as he was the most experienced player in the team in the absence of Michael Ballack, Miroslav Klose and Christoph Metzlder. As the capitan, he also bore the responsibility of taking a penalty kick, rejecting Lahm’s overtures in the process, to fire Germany into 1-0 lead. “Philipp asked if he could take it,” joked Schweinsteiger afterwards. “But I told him he could’t because he had just scored against Turkey!” True, but so did Schweinsteiger! “Oh yeah…”
Ten days later, Bayern were awarted a penalty against Hertha Berlin. Having been ordered to do so by manager Jurgen Klinsmann, Schweinsteiger promptly took the ball without so much as a sideways glance at Lahm, and once again he converted. When Bayern were given another penalty later in the game, Schweinsteiger showed the generous side of his nature and encouraged Miroslav Klose, and not Luca Toni, to take the kick so that he could finally break his drought in front of goal.
LACK OF PACE
“I get the feeling that my opinion counts for something,” says Schweinsteiger while admitting that he is not ready to lead
the team yet. He is right. Nevertheless, it was Schweinsteiger who stepped up to the plate in the absence of Ballack and Frings. His position in the German team is much more secure than at Bayern, where he has lost his preferred left-wing position to French superstar Franck Ribery. In the second half of the 2007-2008 season, he switched to the right to fill in for metatarsal victim AJtintop, and although he also impressed in that position at EURO 2008, right wing is not Schweinsteiger’s ideal position. Bayern’s bosses know all too well that he does not possess that vital yard of pace to enable him to dribble past the world’s best full-backs, which is why you will often see Schweinsteiger play passes across the field or backwards to his team-mates.
Schweinsteiger’s technique, vision and ability to shoot low and hard would perhaps be better utilised in central midfield, but if he is to ever move inside, he will need to be stronger in the tackle and more efficient going forward. His little twists and turns take the pace and the element of surprise out of his game, and in football, as in life, he will soon have to decide where he wants to go.
“I want to develop even further,” says Schweinsteiger. He will have to develop even further, if only for his own sake, so that Bayern Munich can tie him down to a lucrative, long-term contract. Or failing that, another of European football’s giants.
