Pape Diouf doesn’t think Senegal can win the ACN…

January 8th, 2008 | by: Magnusson | Comments(11)

Pape Diouf, the senegalese president of Marseille is a man whose opinion is very often seeked by the senegalese press and they asked him this sunday his opinion about the possible outcome of the ACN and if he thought Senegal could win it or not. Here is what he answered: ‘‘In the major competitions, technicians use less than 20 players. The group performance sometimes turn around 15 to 16 players” said Pape Diouf, stressing about the Lions that ”everybody can agree on this group”.
The national coach Henri Kasperczak had released a group of 38 players that was reduced, Tuesday, to 23 players.
For the Marseille president,’‘the rest of the group is selected on the basis of very subjective criteria. The ties of affinity between players, versatility, but also the level of involvement of a player in the lives of a group”.”You can select a player by the atmosphere he met in a group”.

About the ACN 2008, Pape Diouf wishes that 2008 is the year of consecration for the Lions which, he said, have lost in ”pure quality but compensated with experience ”.

The ACN, which starts Jan. 20 in Ghana, will be ”very open (and) anything can happen”, said the former sports journalist who had created a society of agents of players before being called to head the OM. “From Ghana which will be difficult to handle at home via the Maghreb countries such as Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt and Cameroon with their winning mentality, Cote d’Ivoire and its potential but also Nigeria, with whom anything can happen”, said Pape Diouf who does not place Lions of Senegal among the favourites.

”This may be a surprise ACN as was the case in 1992 with the Elephants of Cote d’Ivoire in Dakar,” he further said.