"To most Brits, Sudan conjures images of warfare and humanitarian crisis. The catastrophe in Darfur in Western Sudan has killed an estimated 300,000 people, and Africa’s longest-running civil war in the south has only just ended after 25 years of violence and bloodshed.
That’s one side of the story: the other is that Sudan is absolutely football mental. Ten footy newspapers are published here daily and two teams – Al Hilal and Al Merreikh – play in the capital, where 25,000 fans will turn up just to watch training sessions. And, Pitched into this maelstrom of football fever is an Englishman, national team manager Stephen Constantine.
Unless you support Millwall, where he coached the first team a few years back, you’ve probably never heard of Stephen. But this is one English manager whose career has taken him beyond the usual footballing hangouts of Nottingham and Accrington Stanley, having piled his trade in India, Nepal and Malawi before he took the Sudan Job..."
