Ask those who have watched Aliou Cissé take Senegal to two World Cups in a row and direct his team to a victory in the Africa Cup of Nations in February, and they will tell you that his country’s wealth of soccer talent is only one part of the reason.
There is something more tedious, more long-term, but far more transformative that Cissé, the 46-year-old former Paris St.-Germain midfielder and former Senegal captain, has brought to his squad since he became its coach in 2015.
“He has turned Senegal into a real professional team, which it wasn’t before,” said Saer Seck, an administrator who led Senegal’s delegation to the last World Cup, in Russia in 2018.