Despite initially hating the idea of Habib Diarra leaving us for the AFCON, it’s got to be said that him playing for his country has been hugely beneficial as he aims to return to action soon for Sunderland.
I can’t lie – when it was announced that Habib Diarra was indeed heading off to the Africa Cup of Nations to represent Senegal, I was gutted.
The Senegalese Football Federation seemingly delayed the announcement of their squad far longer than other nations did, which only led to the annoyance around losing Habib for over a month, having already lost him due to injury for the majority of the season. Our record signing, Diarra just hasn’t been able to get going at Sunderland yet, and none of that has been his or the club’s fault, and from a very selfish perspective, I just wanted to see him playing for us, particularly during a period where we’re already missing a lot of players.
Before he joined up with his international teammates in Morocco, he came off the bench and played 26 minutes against Brighton, and in fairness, you could see just how rusty he actually was. Understandable, of course, but he looked like a man who hadn’t played since August. Yet ahead of the game, Régis Le Bris indicated that there was a plan in place for Diarra’s rehabilitation. He said the plan was for him to be phased back into the side before going on international duty, and hinted that conversations between Sunderland and the Senegal national team had been good.
Senegal now find themselves in the final of AFCON, and unfortunately, Diarra won’t be able to play as he picked up a yellow card in the semi-finals, which rules him out of the competition. It’s a shit rule, really, but again, if I’m looking at this from an entirely selfish perspective, it means he’s not at risk of injury in that game and will return to Wearside next week and be in training ahead of the trip to West Ham.
It looks as though AFCON has acted effectively as a mini-pre-season for Habib, and it can’t be denied that, despite my initial selfish thoughts on the matter, this has been for the best for him.
He was left on the bench for the opening two group games, but was given a full half of football in their final Group D match against Benin, and then has started the three games since, but has had his minutes managed. He played 73 minutes in the Round of 16 victory over Sudan, got just over an hour against Mali in the quarter-finals, and played the first half in the semi-final win over Egypt on Wednesday.
Senegal haven’t pushed him, but he’s started highly competitive games and got vital minutes into his legs that he probably wouldn’t have gotten with Sunderland, given the workload we’ve had in the period that he’s been away. With the games in the Premier League so close together, it would have been difficult to expect a player who has been out for over three months to be able to play every three days in a side that, for large periods, presses high and runs lots without the ball. Senegal, as one of the better sides in the competition, have mainly played against lesser opposition where the workload will have been high, but his physical output not quite as high as it might have been if he’d been turning out for us against the likes of Manchester City, Tottenham, Brentford, and Leeds.
As he’s missing out on the action in the final, that means he gets a bit of a rest before returning to the Academy of Light for first-team training next week, which can only be a good thing for us.
He’s been able to knock off the rust with his international side, and whilst I understand that this is a well-worn cliché, he should return to us like a new signing, which, I guess, he technically is.
Whilst you’d say for Bertrand Traoré and Arthur Masuaku (who are both injured now for up to six weeks) and Chemsdine Talbi (he’s played just 16 minutes of football throughout the tournament), the AFCON has been a huge negative, the opposite can be said of Habib Diarra, and this should all set him up nicely for a strong second half of the season.
Category: General Sports
