Desailly Ready To Step Into Le Roy’s Shoes

Former France international and World Cup winner Marcel Desailly has confirmed his intention to return to football as coach of Ghana, once current manager Claude Le Roy has finished his "great job".

Desailly, who was born in Ghana before moving to France as a child, retired as a player in 2006 and has spent his time since then as an ambassador for UNICEF and working on other projects, mostly with children.

The 39-year-old, who helped France win the World Cup in 1998 and the European Championship two years later, ruled himself out of the Ghana job when it went to Frenchman LeRoy last year but next time he will be keen to apply.

"My time will come," Desailly told Reuters in an interview last Sunday. "Ghana has a good generation of players. We have Claude Le Roy, who is doing a great job.
"Me, I'm still young.

I feel like I need to cross the world. I'm an ambassador of UNICEF. I work with the orphanage. For the moment I need to dedicate myself on the ground to the kids.

"In the future, I will come back into coaching. My target for sure (is Ghana). After Le Roy, my time will come."
Desailly enjoyed a successful career at club level, as well as with France, winning the European Cup with Olympique Marseille in 1993 before enjoying long spells with AC Milan and Chelsea before closing out his career in Qatar.

As one of the most high profile and successful foreign imports to the Premier League, he urged England not to overreact to their failure to qualify for Euro 2008 by bringing in a quota system.

"You have to separate the two things," said Desailly, who was speaking after the launch of a McDonald's Player Escort programme.

"You can not say that because there are plenty of foreigners in England that's why England have failed. You have 24 or 30 players who are top players, who are able to win those 12 games England played. Come on, look at the names. After that it's bad luck or injuries.

"But on top of that look at the English league, which is the most popular and which has the most money, and that's also because of the foreigners who have come.

"If you feel that's going too far, try to find a little solution to reduce it a little bit. Bring the clubs to tell them that we should try as much as possible to reduce the thing.

"You have to balance and cool down a little bit. Let's keep things as they are. There's no emergency. You just have to balance things up a bit."

—REUTERS