How do budding African footballers make it to the top?

wants to come here,” smiles Bassouaré Diaby, the head trainer at Génération Foot, a football academy a few hours out of Dakar, the capital. It is easy to see why. Three verdant training pitches abut a small stadium complete with corporate boxes, a video-analysis suite and a briefing room for press conferences. Players as young as 12 live on the site, which also has a gym, a lycée to make sure aspiring footballers complete their schooling, and a barbershop. The players should all “be well groomed and in the same way”, says Talla Fall, who shows your football-mad correspondent around. “That’s part of discipline,” he says, adding: “We have put in place everything to give the boys the best chance to perform.” It is working. More than 15 current players, who joined the academy after extensive scouting and trials, represent Senegal in youth teams. This year Senegal’s national team, the Teranga Lions, won the Africa Cup of Nations for the first time thanks to a penalty kick from Sadio Mané, Senegal’s global superstar, who was trained at Génération Foot. That prompted a joyous countrywide street party featuring lamp-post-climbing and flame-throwing.