Title: Of course, of course
Description: Marcel Desailly goes back to his roots
Description: Marcel Desailly goes back to his roots
Der_Kaiser - September 20, 2009 10:27 AM (GMT)
| QUOTE |
| Marcel Desailly goes back to his roots The France World Cup hero is providing Ghanaian children detached from their families with a home and an education  When they first came across Prince he was a few weeks old. They found him on a rubbish dump, abandoned. Only later, after he was examined by doctors, was his condition diagnosed as microencephalitis. Later still, its probable cause was determined. Prince had been born to an alcoholic mother. Meet four-year-old Prince now and his symptoms, the learning difficulties, are only apparent after a little while. Prince — not his real name — is an exuberant, energetic child who grips the hand of any nearby grown-up and wants to lead them to his favourite places, of which there are several in and around the village of Ayeniah, about an hour outside Accra, the capital of Ghana. On this late summer morning, Prince is evidently taken by the impressive, athletic adult who often calls in at Ayeniah to check on the progress of the project set up by OrphanAid Africa, and supported by the Laureus Sport for Good Foundation. The project gives children detached from their families a home and an education. Like Prince, the visitor had an early childhood that changed direction radically, thanks to fate’s quirks. Born 41 years ago in Accra, he was set on a different course, about to be baptised with the name Odenkey Abbey. Instead he became Marcel Desailly and grew up to become captain of France’s football team and icon of Marseilles, Milan and Chelsea. Today he has a third identity. The children of Ayeniah know him, and clearly love him, as “Dada Spaghetti”. Desailly now lives in Accra. The decision surprised some of his contemporaries in football, even some of his friends, but it was no whim. His background is unusual. He left Ghana to live in France when he was four, with three elder siblings, his mother and her husband, a French diplomat who adopted her youngest son almost as soon as Marcel, who might otherwise have been Odenkey, was born. The story can, Desailly says with a smile, seem complicated and his upbringing “of two cultures”, as he puts it, had its challenging moments. He first met his biological father, an architect, when he was 18. It was a memorable encounter: they were formal with one another and Mr Abbey asked his son for money. To the teenager it seemed a hurtful introduction, scarcely softened by his mother’s explanation that “in Africa attitudes to money are not the same as in Europe. The mentality is that a young man returning to his country should look after his own”. Desailly understands better now the different perspectives. He has come to know an extended family that, he eventually realised, numbered towards the hundreds. As Desailly began to travel more often to Ghana, in the holidays his playing career allowed, he discovered that “on average all my aunts and uncles had about 11 children each”. Several now work with him in Ghana across the various interests he has there. Some are connected to sport, such as the new facilities that have made basketball and football a focus for the children at Ayeniah. There are also directions in which Desailly, in his new life, is determined not to be led. He does not, he emphasises, want to be involved in an “academy” that identifies, trains and exports young African footballers across the world, as other players have. “Some young African players are taken to Europe because they have a huge potential, which is fine,” he says. “But some go there just because the negotiation has gone okay and then a European club has taken on the player who will probably fail and nobody will any longer take responsibility for him. I don’t like that approach. What I see is missing here in Ghana is facilities for sport, not for an academy, but for the community.” He can bring some of his expertise, too, something openly valued by the Ghanaian Football Federation and ministry of sport. Twice in the past three years he has been approached to coach the national team, the Black Stars. Both times he said no, although you sense the temptation was there. Ghana have qualified stylishly for next summer’s World Cup and possess terrific footballers such as Chelsea’s Michael Essien and Inter’s Ali Sulley Muntari. But Desailly has no desire to be a professional coach, at least not yet. In some ways it seems almost perverse that he isn’t one. He has the authority, the leadership, the intelligence, the communication skills and looks across the managerial landscape of Europe and sees so many of his contemporaries and former colleagues — Leonardo at Milan, Didier Deschamps at Marseilles, Laurent Blanc at Bordeaux, Pep Guardiola at Barcelona — in senior posts in their early 40s. “It comes from my background,” he explains. “I needed to do something other than football. My adoptive father was a diplomat and never understood why I was playing football. He always thought you have to make your brain work. And football is a bubble, enclosed and obsessive. I prefer not to be exposed again to the world where one day you are the main man and the next you read in the newspaper that you can’t do anything. I’ve done it for 20 years. I don’t have the ego for it.” Which is not to say he no longer likes the game that made him famous. He follows it closely, knows he is indebted to it and is evidently proud of his long chain of successes. At the home in Accra he shares with his French wife and his two youngest children — the elder two are at university and boarding school in France — there are mementos, such as the Louis XV chairs upholstered in Milan colours. And in his mind, there are memories and loyalties felt as if they were formed yesterday. One is of Chelsea, whom he joined from Milan in 1998 and left in 2004 “when I could see that William Gallas and John Terry were faster than me”. Five years on, he senses a constructive rage about his old club. “There’s a kind of anger, because the players are hurt,” he explains. “After reaching semi-finals, at least, of the Champions League almost every year, they need to win it soon. That’s why it’s a good moment for Carlo Ancelotti to come in. The players know Ancelotti has lifted this cup, too.” Another enduring loyalty is to Fabio Capello, who coached Desailly at Milan. Respect is mutual and close to boundless on the part of the former player. “Ah, Don Fabio,” grins Desailly. “I had a special feeling with him. He’s a winner. Look what he has done with the English squad, an amazing squad except maybe for some of the strikers. They were just missing management. The players were coming into the national team and, in their minds, their clubs were more important than the national team, because that’s where the business is, the exposure. But Capello now has given them the commitment to the national team, the tactical discipline. “Capello is one guy who can just apply pressure on you just with his eyes. Just a look can make you think, ‘Hey, I’d better really run now’. At Milan, if your position was one metre different from what he had asked, he looked at you like you had killed somebody. Nobody else has ever applied pressure on me like that. But I like him because I am also very tough. If you fight me, I’m going to show you I am better than you. “I still get that feeling now when, say, my little boy tries to defy me over something. I can feel a little bit of anger rising in me and so what I do is just be cool, even look a bit easygoing.” He wears that look well. “I am at peace,” says Desailly, with the children of Ayeniah at play around him. |
:bow:
McNamara That Ghost... - September 22, 2009 12:08 PM (GMT)
What a man. Hope he is part of BBC's World Cup coverage next year along with Leonardo.
Syn - September 22, 2009 12:09 PM (GMT)
| QUOTE (McNamara That Ghost... @ Sep 22 2009, 01:08 PM) |
| What a man. Hope he is part of BBC's World Cup coverage next year along with Leonardo. |
For sure.
Marc Overmars - September 22, 2009 12:11 PM (GMT)
And hopefully O'Neill is nowhere near the studio. :good:
Syn - September 22, 2009 12:12 PM (GMT)
| QUOTE (Marc Overmars @ Sep 22 2009, 01:11 PM) |
| And hopefully O'Neill is nowhere near the studio. :good: |
:goodpost:
Takes him 5 hours to complete a sentence. And not in the Adebayor way.
fari - September 24, 2009 10:57 PM (GMT)
wow...good stuff.
Get Bendtner - September 24, 2009 11:00 PM (GMT)
Pure.
Class.
Class.