Cissé is a Gay. ;o)

[Kopite]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2093-1796041,00.html

 

The Sunday Times

September 25, 2005

 

Cisse laid bare

Jonathan Northcroft

 

He may be unconventional, but Djibril Cisse is desperate to win over Liverpool fans against Chelsea on Wednesday

 

Djibril Cisse does his work inside the box and his thinking outside it. His look suggests somebody with an original view of life and in person he does not disappoint. He was once asked what he would be if he could be anything for a day. “A woman,” he answered.

 

“That’s right,” he says, “I know you might want to make fun of me for sounding gay but that’s what I’d choose. It would help me understand my wife and half the world’s population. I’d do it — as long as 24 hours later I’d come back as a man.”

 

Intelligent, alternative, unafraid: when time is called on our interview after 35 minutes of such conversation, I’m left wanting more. Liverpool fans feel similarly about the striker. From the moment Cisse signed for a club record £14m to when photographs appeared of him last week posing naked for charity, he has attracted attention. Yet the picture of him is incomplete.

 

First because of a gruesome leg injury, when the splintering of two bones almost resulted in him losing his foot, and lately because of Rafael Benitez’s tendency to use him as an impact substitute rather than a starter in a lone striker system, fans have been unable to judge him as a player.

 

People like the cut of this Djib, but want to see the whole vessel. Supporters see the hair, the boots, the tattoos and the intensity and perhaps even the vulnerability contained within, but they need to see more of him on the pitch, as they did when he scored from the spot to earn Liverpool a 2-2 draw against Birmingham yesterday. It is what Cisse wants, too, with a passion that radiates from his searching eyes. “My leg’s okay. Now it’s about trying to score goals and finding the level I had before my injury. Physically I’m 100%, but what I need is confidence,” he says.

 

There is anxiety. Cisse needed convincing to do this interview. His view of the English media is sceptical. He has had to bear constant mentions of Michael Owen and speculation that Liverpool want rid of him, which continues even now Owen has joined Newcastle. It has been hard for a naturally trusting person to take and hard on Jude, his new wife.

 

“I just want to say to people that I don’t want to leave,” says Cisse. “I want to be at Liverpool for a long time. I like the fans. I love the club. I don’t want to go anywhere and I don’t think I will. The speculation about me leaving never came from me and I don’t think it came from the club. I’ve had to be strong, but sometimes it’s made me sad.”

 

In a recent poll, 89% of supporters said they wanted to keep Cisse at Liverpool. “That touched me,” he says. Fans were displeased at what seemed to be petulant gestures at teammates in a recent game, but most were willing to put this down to angst: if you were young (Cisse turned 24 last month), abroad, your career had almost been ended and now you had to fight to prove yourself, how would you feel?

 

“England has not seen the best of me. I really want to show people what I can do,” he says. “Because of the love they’ve given me I want to give something back to supporters and score a lot of goals.”

 

He cannot do this on the bench. But for all his flamboyance, ego is something Cisse does not display and he does not question Benitez for making him substitute in eight of Liverpool’s 14 games, including yesterday, and often using him on the wing. “I love to play. But the boss can’t put 20 players on the pitch so someone has to be on the bench and at the moment it’s me,” he says. “I accept it. I’m not frustrated.

 

“It is not my position on the right, but if I have to play there for the team I’ll do it. All our strikers are different — Peter [Crouch] and Nando [Morientes] are good in the air, Flo [sinama-Pongolle] likes to run with the ball and the good thing for me is I offer something unique because of my speed. The boss hasn’t said why he isn’t choosing me, but we do talk and have the normal relationship of a player and coach.”

 

Benitez is thought to want Cisse to improve his team play. But it is not the Spaniard’s style to have heart-to-hearts. Cisse will have to take instructions in training and work things out for himself. Perhaps he’s still adjusting to life without Guy Roux, his coach at Auxerre and best man at his recent wedding. Imagine Thierry Henry deprived of Arsène Wenger or Paul Scholes without Sir Alex Ferguson — Roux was Cisse’s mentor to a similar extent.

 

At Liverpool Cisse has managed 12 goals in 38 appearances, 20 of them starts, still a decent strike rate and better than that of Crouch or Morientes. But at Auxerre his scoring was spectacular. In 128 appearances he struck 70 times. Roux, Auxerre’s manager for 44 years, fashioned a gameplan that played to Cisse’s strengths — his speed and clean, powerful shooting — and did not ask him to do the less comfortable task of linking play.

 

“I played alone in the front of a 4-5-1 system, sometimes with Olivier Kapo behind me,” Cisse explains. The result was two French golden boots and a player-of-the-year award.

 

“Roux is the most important person in my career. I still telephone him. He was strict, but you need that.”

 

Did they ever row? “Oh yeah! We had an argument once a week, but the next day it was forgotten. Sometimes I’d have a TV show in Paris and he didn’t like that. Sometimes the argument was football but mostly it was about things outside the game. But he liked my hair! Sometimes he’d say, ‘You look stupid’, or, ‘What are those clothes?’ But only to have fun. It was like dad and son, our relationship was that close.”

 

Cisse’s real father, also a footballer, who captained the Ivory Coast, left home when he was two. His mother had to move her seven children (Cisse is the youngest) from a pleasant country town to a tough estate in Arles. She took various cleaning jobs to support her kids. “I don’t know how she did it. She was very brave,” Cisse says. “She worked so hard and saved all the money she could to buy me boots. She wanted me to feel happy and not that life was hard, but I knew it was — for her.”

 

One brother, Abou, played alongside Eric Cantona at Nimes while two others, Seni and Hamed, also went into professional football. There was a path for Cisse to follow when, aged 11, he went to live at the youth academy at Nimes, and at 15 moved onto Auxerre.

 

He was always the same: changing hairstyles and borrowing his brothers’ clothes to experiment with different looks (“I get bored quickly and like to change things — except my wife!”) and was always passionately obsessed with a certain thing: goals. “From when I started playing aged six I counted all my goals, even the ones I scored in the street,” he says. “I had a little book at home and I’d write down every time I scored. Sometimes it was 100 per week or more. Goals became like a drug …

 

“I get the same feeling now. When you score at Anfield it’s hard to explain, but it’s like, ‘Wooah! wow!’. . . nothing else in life. I’m not going to say scoring’s like making love, but it’s almost the same.”

 

Cisse’s face comes alive. “I want to score more goals. I haven’t scored enough for Liverpool, but I’m confident I can because I did it in the past. Right now it’s just a question of time — for me to understand the system and English football. I know when I start to score there will be a lot of goals.” If goals really are narcotic then Liverpool supporters are doing cold turkey. Their side have scored just three times in their last five League games, and Cisse shudders at the pleasure he would bring if he were the man to bring goals back again.

 

“When I broke my leg, even more than my family, the fans supported me. I received hundreds of letters. Seriously, I think they’re the best fans in the world. I always wanted to play in England. For me it is the best league for the fans, the atmosphere and I think at Liverpool those things are the best of all. When Chelsea came to Anfield last year [in the Champions League] it was incredible.”

 

It will be the same when Jose Mourinho and his men return on Wednesday. “It’s a big challenge for us because they want to take revenge for last season. I’m looking forward to it because I’m going to play against players I know well: Didier Drogba, William Gallas, Claude Makelele — and Shaun Wright-Phillips. He was at my wedding and he’s a good guy.”

 

Chelsea currently look unbeatable. “I’m not sure about that. We’ll see.” European nights have so far provided the highlights of Cisse’s Liverpool career. His goals won Liverpool the Uefa Super Cup and in the Champions League final, with great poise, he scored in the penalty shootout. One of the highlights of Liverpool’s victory parade was the sight of Cisse, bare-chested, dangling from the back of their bus, 18ft off the ground with no care for the insurance implications.

 

His own transport is a Hummer and, at his £100,000 wedding staged in a Welsh castle, he wore red. “It was partly to show my love of Liverpool, but I must be honest, when I was young I said, ‘If I get married, it’ll be in red’.” Just as well he’s not at Everton.

 

It would, however, be a mistake to think Cisse is all about image and bling. A thoughtful soul, he part-owns a vineyard and refused a local hunt permission to ride across the grounds of his country house in Cheshire. “I have a cat, a parrot . . . I’ve always loved animals and I really hate hunting. It’s cruel,” he says.

 

Even Cisse’s tattoos speak of his gentleness. On his neck is Ilona, his daughter’s name, and spread across his back are wings. In Islam, Djibril was an angel who dictated the Koran to Muhammad. “Djibril means Gabriel,” Cisse smiles. He still believes, despite everything, he can take Liverpool to heaven.

[Skidfingers McGonical]

Why have a link and then copy and paste the article.

 

Defeats the object and pointless.

[Rashid]

Talking of Islam, I wonder how Mohammed Sissoko, Djibril Cisse etc are going to handle Ramadan!! I know Kolo Toure who goes to the same Mosque as me fasts even during games.

[Cath]

Talking of Islam, I wonder how Mohammed Sissoko, Djibril Cisse etc are going to handle Ramadan!! I know Kolo Toure who goes to the same Mosque as me fasts even during games.

Maybe we could save them for the Anderlecht games. Am I right in thinking they could a few chapatis during them?

[Rashid]

Maybe we could save them for the Anderlecht games. Am I right in thinking they could a few chapatis during them?

 

Its the day games that are hard so yes evening games would be good.

 

As for Chapati's thats on the Indian sub-continent - these boys are Africans and won't choosing Chapato's as their main food!

[dave u]

I know Kolo Toure who goes to the same Mosque as me fasts even during games.

 

 

Big deal, don't all players fast during games? Even Harry Kewell.

 

Maybe that's why I never made it. Often I could be seen standing alone up front scoffing a bag of crisps whilst my team was under the cosh.

[Hermes]

I know Kolo Toure who goes to the same Mosque as me fasts even during games.

 

Don't they all, even Rooney doesn't run around with a Big Mac in each hand. ;)

[Rashid]

Big deal, don't all players fast during games? Even Harry Kewell.

 

Dave we're mates but we are going to fall out over Kewell. ;)

[Hermes]

Big deal, don't all players fast during games? Even Harry Kewell.

 

 

Damn, administrators sensoring there Dave?

[aikido]

Cisse annoyed me yesterday when he scored the goal. He started lapping up the applause and acting like he scored the winner, instead of grabbing the ball out of the net and running back to the centre circle. If you watch it again, it looks like Carragher or Gerrard eventually grabs him by the back of the jersey and tells him to hurry the fuck up.

[MLB]

Dave we're mates

 

 

Isn't that slander?

[Maldini]

Talking of Islam, I wonder how Mohammed Sissoko, Djibril Cisse etc are going to handle Ramadan!! I know Kolo Toure who goes to the same Mosque as me fasts even during games.

Are you sure Cissé is Muslim?

 

Interesting point though, Diouf was class for us up until Ramadan in his first season.

[Paul]

Are you sure Cissé is Muslim?

 

Interesting point though, Diouf was class for us up until Ramadan in his first season.

I'd never considered the impact of Ramadan on Muslim players. Muslims don't eat during daylight hours during Ramadan - is that right? If so, that is some feat to play at Premiership level with no fuel in your body for at least the previous 10 hours or so.

[Rashid]

Are you sure Cissé is Muslim?

 

Interesting point though, Diouf was class for us up until Ramadan in his first season.

 

He has a Muslim name and I thought the Journo intimated that he was a Muslim. I knwo Diao, Diouf, and Sissoko are definitelt Muslim as is Zidane and Anelka.

 

"In Islam, Djibril was an angel who dictated the Koran to Muhammad. “Djibril means Gabriel,” Cisse smiles. He still believes.

 

Paul, thats right during Ramadan its hard. No water even.

[dave u]

Cisse annoyed me yesterday when he scored the goal. He started lapping up the applause and acting like he scored the winner, instead of grabbing the ball out of the net and running back to the centre circle. If you watch it again, it looks like Carragher or Gerrard eventually grabs him by the back of the jersey and tells him to hurry the fuck up.

 

 

I felt the same. It was Gerrard I think who hauled him back.

[Paul]

He has a Muslim name and I thought the Journo intimated that he was a Muslim. I knwo Diao, Diouf, and Sissoko are definitelt Muslim as is Zidane and Anelka.

 

"In Islam, Djibril was an angel who dictated the Koran to Muhammad. “Djibril means Gabriel,” Cisse smiles. He still believes.

 

Paul, thats right during Ramadan its hard. No water even.

Fucking hell! Surely there must be health implications for top flight sportsmen? Dehydration must be a serious risk; is there no way around it? You know, like the way the alcohol thing is specific to the fermentation of wheat or grape and therefore a nice glass of nettle wine is totally acceptable.

[Rashid]

Fucking hell! Surely there must be health implications for top flight sportsmen? Dehydration must be a serious risk; is there no way around it? You know, like the way the alcohol thing is specific to the fermentation of wheat or grape and therefore a nice glass of nettle wine is totally acceptable.

 

In the summer its from 3am to 10pm...... 19 hours!! No water no food.

[cochcaer]

I felt the same. It was Gerrard I think who hauled him back.

 

Like Gerrard is the one for handing out celebration advice. He's normally toi busy kissing the badge and goin I'm the Man :party:

[RSM]

Cisse is not Muslim

[rhinosaur]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2093-1796041,00.html

 

. “I have a cat, a parrot . . . I’ve always loved animals and I really hate hunting. It’s cruel,” he says.

 

 

Judging by his wife he loves dog's as well.

[cochcaer]

Cisse is not Muslim

 

He's a very naughty boy.

[RedinSweden]

Cisse annoyed me yesterday when he scored the goal. He started lapping up the applause and acting like he scored the winner, instead of grabbing the ball out of the net and running back to the centre circle. If you watch it again, it looks like Carragher or Gerrard eventually grabs him by the back of the jersey and tells him to hurry the fuck up.

 

Aye, exactly. He takes a cracking penalty mind. Always seems to send the keeper the wrong way, whenever I have seen him take one (cue 300 replies of examples where he missed). He needs to have a word about his attitude, he is there to do a job. You expect players to celebrate, but he just takes it too far.