Afcon 2023: Ivory Coast's legacy for producing homegrown stars a fading memory

To find tranquility in Abidjan, it’s best to head for the banks of the lagoon. To find the heart of Ivory Coast’s most popular sport, or at least the motor that has driven the country’s football, go to the eastern edge of the Ebrie.

Here are the headquarters of ASEC Mimosas, the nation’s most celebrated club with an academy that not so long ago would have been deemed among the world’s most productive. Scan the roll of honour as you enter the site’s patchwork of pitches, classrooms and dormitories , and you’ll see listed the Toure bothers, Kolo and Yaya, the latter the great galvaniser of Manchester City’s modern rise and a European club champion with Barcelona.

There are the Kalous, too, Salomon, a Champions League winner with Chelsea, and his brother Bonaventure, later of Paris Saint-Germain. There’s Gervinho, later of Arsenal. There’s Didier Zokora, the most capped player for Ivory Coast’s national team and an asset to the midfields of various European clubs after he made the familiar journey abroad from ASEC.

There will be more recent ASEC graduates, though less feted, among those representing the national team on Saturday at the new Olympic Stadium in Epimbe for the opening match of the Africa Cup of Nations, the first hosted in Ivory Coast for 40 years. It's a major chance for The Elephants, as they are nicknamed, to repeat their lone Afcon triumph, the 2015 victory that endorsed the so-called golden generation of Ivorian players, a high concentration of them brought through the ASEC hothouse.

If the champion side of the Toures and the younger Kalou, of Didier Drogba – a superstar whose football upbringing was largely in France – casts an imposing shadow, they also represent a different time, when the pathway