The End of Amara Traoré?

After the shock failure of AFCON 2012, the future of coach Amara Traoré is very much in jeopardy today. In a campaign when Senegal were considered one of the favorites of the tournament after the likes of Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire and in a group composed of Equatorial Guinea (co-hosts), Libya & Zambia, Senegal had all the chances to qualify and were certainly expected to finish top. In the end however, Senegal were knocked out after three successive losses and having only scored three goals.

And so the knives are already out for Amara Traoré who has been far from a crowd favorite here in Senegal, and that even during the qualification campaign. Indeed much of the Senegalese people have quite a lot of beef with the national team coach, as they don’t consider Amara Traoré to have the stature to lead this group to glory on the continent. Amara Traoré played for Senegal just 10 years ago when he last participated in the 2002 World Cup. He also had experience abroad – albeit modest one – playing in Ligue 2 [in France] for Bastia, Metz, and most notably Gueugnon. A self-made man, Amara Traoré took advantage of the void left in Senegalese football following the 2002 success to prepare his return to the big stage. After completing his coaching badges in Germany, he became coach of ASC Linguère in 2007 and led his hometown club to successive promotions & then won the Senegalese Ligue 1 title (in 2009) at the first time of asking. His two-year stint at the Saint-Louis club made him the outstanding candidate for the national team job, after the Federation of Senegalese Football (FSF) had decided to move away from expensive foreign managers.

Much of the issue people have with Traoré has to do with his tactical ability & competency. Senegal's plethora of strikers is well known and Traoré has a tendency to want to play as many of them as possible at the same time. Indeed Traoré often played, throughout the qualification campaign, with Papiss Cissé leading the line, Dame Ndoye in-behind the striker as a playmaker, and Mamadou Niang & Moussa Sow as wingers down the flanks. Traoré consolidates all this with two holding midfielder whose main function is to protect the back-four & provide the forwards with the ball as soon as they recover it. In essence then, Traoré’s tactical formation of choice is the 1960s favorite and somewhat anachronistic 4-2-4. Another sticking point for the Senegalese fans is that the “team does not play” as there is an exorbitantly obvious lack of a proper midfield creator/playmaker. Finally, the much-publicized contract-renewal talks [mere months before start of the tournament] of Traoré will also play a role in this, with many sure to hold the coach’s demands [and eventual acquisition] of a higher pay-package against him.

Despite popular opinion to change his style of play however, Traoré stuck to his guns and oversaw a brilliant qualification campaign when Senegal end top of their group and were unbeaten coming into AFCON 2012. However it all came to aa terrible halt in a meteoric coming-down to Earth. The scarring experience in Bata showed that Senegal still has a long way to go and that the reconstruction phase still needs more time. The question that remains of course is will it be with Amara Traoré or with someone else? With AFCON 2013 [in South Africa] fast approaching, I would [personally] opt to retain the current coach & make a decision based on results then. However I am very much in the minority of those holding that opinion and I fear that Amara Traoré will not survive this coming inquest.