How do budding African footballers make it to the top?

“All of Senegal 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.”