Even so, his path to stardom was far from clear-cut, with a number of the coaches unsure as to whether he would make the grade. Dindane quietly got on with his work and put in the hard graft, but this was not enough. When Guillou picked his best XI for a big match against Esperance de Tunis on 7 February 1999, Dindane found himself sitting on the bench.
The teams were level when the French coach finally decided to give the striker a chance and Dindane set about changing the course of the match in a matter of minutes. The goal he scored was a beauty, after he had taken on and beaten the whole of the Esperance defence, and it helped establish him as a regular in the team for the next two seasons.
In 2000, at the age of 20, Belgian champions Anderlecht came calling and Dindane would end up spending five seasons there, the highlight being in 2003 when he was voted the country’s player of the season and also won the Ebony Boot as the best African player in Belgium. Dindane was gradually making a name for himself.
He was already a technically-gifted forward with great speed and acceleration, capable of unsettling defences with his jinking runs. As his career took off, he received his first cap, and by then his ability was no longer in question.
Lens in focus<\/B>
His excellent record in Belgium, where he notched 50 goals in 132 matches and won the league title twice, saw him given the opportunity to further his career. This time it was French club Lens who signed him in 2005, though his first season there was an average one by his standards.
With his compact, yet stocky physique, Dindane is gradually carving himself a niche as an ideal foil for his international strike partner Didier Drogba. In the eight qualifying matches for the 2006 FIFA World Cup™, he scored five goals and set up just as many. He was looking forward to carrying this rich vein of form through to the CAF African Cup of Nations 2006 until a family tragedy forced him to pull out. Arouna Kone and Baky Kone each had good tournaments in his absence, but Dindane remains a near-certain starter alongside Chelsea hitman Drogba come Germany 2006.
Thinking back to that night in February 1999 at the Felicia stadium in Abidjan, Dindane sees this summer’s tournament as a way of repaying the early faith shown in him. At the time, Jean-Marc Guillou predicted that his generation of players would just be coming into their own by the time the 2006 FIFA World Cup came around and Dindane has the perfect opportunity to prove him right.
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