FR
EN
15 December 2016
OFFICIAL : Ivory Coast to take part in the Toulon Tournament 2017 !
After Wales, another country has confirmed its participation to the Toulon Tournament 2017 : Ivory Coast. The African nation will take part in our competition for the 9th time.
Ivory Coast is the only African nation to have won the Festival (in 2010). The Ivorians will come in the south of France to prepare the Francophone Games which will be held next summer (21-30 July) at Abidjan.
“The Toulon Tournament is a mini-World Cup. This is a high-quality tournament. When you analyze the current squads of national teams like Chile or Colombia, you’ll see that many of their players took part in the Toulon Tournament earlier in their careers. This is a big competition and we can’t produce a poor performance”, has warned Aïdara Soualio, the Ivory Coast U20 head coach.
The Ivorian manager tells us more about the current crop of players at his disposal. “It’s a mix between local talents and players who are already playing in Europe like Kouassi Eboue (Krasnodar), Ibrahima Sangaré (Toulouse) or Ismaël Diallo (Bastia). These players have progressed through our youth teams and some of them have been crowned U17 African champions few years ago. Our aim is to help this crop of players to reach the Ivory Coast senior squad. This a project we have started since 2012-2013”, said Aïdara Soualio.
These young Ivorians are certainly hoping to follow the path of Kolo Touré, Didier Zokora and Copa Barry, their famous predecessors who played the Toulon Tournament in 2000 and have developed into key members of the Ivory Coast senior squad few years later.
