After 21 years and 11 different Africa Cup of Nations finals in which at least one of the coaches on the touchline was not from Africa, a significant piece of history will happen on Friday in Cairo.
Senegal, attempting to win the title for the first time, and Algeria, looking for their first Afcon triumph outside their own country, are each guided by one of their own.
It is a landmark, if not necessarily a clear signpost for all the continent’s aspiring managers.
Indeed, look carefully at the career paths of Aliou Cisse, the former midfielder in charge of the Senegalese, and Djamel Belmadi, the ex-playmaker overseeing a talented Algerian squad, and this meeting can look like just the latest of a series of eerie, pre-destined coincidences.
These two 43-year-olds were born only a day apart. And they spent their formative years growing up barely two kilometres from one another.
Cisse, born in Ziguinchor, moved from Senegal to France at the age of nine, settling with his mother in Champigny-sur-Marne, just south-east of Paris.
Belmadi was born in the very same town, and, although a dual-national he would always maintain, once he envisaged becoming a professional footballer, that playing for Algeria, where his parents came from, rather than his native France was the ambition.
He fulfilled it, with 20 caps, having passed through the youth ranks at Paris Saint-Germain and establishing himself as a crowd-pleasing attacking midfielder with a gift for delivering a dead ball at various clubs, notably Marseille.
Cisse and Belmadi cannot recall meeting, despite being near neighbours, as children.
But then perhaps it was unlikely Belmadi, a nuggety 1.74m in adulthood, would have felt drawn to the sportshalls where the tall, pre-adolescent Cisse was such a dominant handball player in that his dynamic leaps would frequently dislodge the ceiling lights.
Once the Senegalese applied himself to football, he developed into a commanding central midfielder. He too caught the attention of PSG, but would become a fixture in their midfield later, after he had served his apprenticeship at Lille.
The friendship between Cisse and Belmadi grew beyond Champigny, through jousts in Ligue 1, where Cisse tracked Belmadi’s runs in one fiery Marseille-PSG clash, and in Africa, where Belmadi’s Algeria were brushed aside by Cisse’s soaring Senegal in qualifying for the 2002 World Cup, the signature event in the West African nation’s football history.
Cisse was the skipper when a confident, charismatic Senegal progressed all the way to the quarter-finals in South Korea and Japan.
That achievement was overseen by a French head coach, the late Bruno Metsu. No surprise there: Of the nine times in World Cup history that an African country has reached the knockout phase, in eight of them the manager came from outside Africa.
Only in 2014 did the late Stephen Keshi of Nigeria break that pattern, although Cisse came tantalisingly close last year in Russia, in charge of the Senegal who missed out on second place in their group only because they had picked up more yellow cards than Japan.
It's a date then...
— CAF (@CAF_Online) July 14, 2019
19/7/2019 - Cairo Stadium 🏟️ pic.twitter.com/mTPHXhtjw5
Cisse kept his job after that setback, testament to the faith his players and his Federation hold in him, in the obvious leadership he showed as a captain, and during his time in charge of the national age-group teams.
His countrymen have seen him bear some tough times, too, notably the loss of 12 members of his family in the MV Le Joola tragedy of 2002, when a ferry sailing from Ziguinchor to Dakar capsized, and over 1,800 passengers died.
Cisse has spoken about institutional disadvantages. “Local coaches don’t get respected,” he said at the 2018 World Cup, “we get passed over even if we are just as capable of motivating, developing a plan”.
#LesFennecs manager talking about the previous clash with the #TerangaLions 👀#TotalAFCON2019 pic.twitter.com/hRRxtnRpsJ
— CAF (@CAF_Online) July 18, 2019
For his part, Belmadi, who came back to Algeria, and a high-pressure role, last year after successes coaching in Qatar, says of this Afcon final: “It’s very special to be there with my friend Aliou, and a good message for African coaches that we are there."
Both face tests of their resourcefulness. The dreadlocked Cisse must devise a plan to compensate for the absence of his outstanding central defender Kalidou Koulibaly, who is suspended.
The shaven-headed, ever demonstrative Belmadi needs to exploit what capital he can from Algeria’s 1-0 win over Senegal in the group phase of this Afcon.
Both must weather mammoth expectations, from across a Senegal that has never won this title, as from an Algeria whose one triumph, on their own soil, was a distant 29 years ago.
