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Originally Posted by ruudvantastic
10 Ivory Coast players!!!! And we call Arsenal French just for having 6 or 7 in the squad most of the time over the past few years.
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Bit of background. Jean-Marc Guillou runs the show. He has an academy in Africa and he used to send his players to ASEC d’Abidjan. But he fell out with them and has now "taken over" Beveren to use the Ivory Coast players as a shop window. He is a close friend of Wenger. In reality, it's a conveyor belt for players coming from Ivory Coast. They regularly have 10 or 11 Ivory Coast players in the first team. They have already sold Yapi Yapo to Nantes, Yaya Touré (brother of Arsenal's Kolo) and Arsène Né to Metalurg Donetsk (Ukraine). Quite high fees for young players without many international caps - but they are class players. It's all a bit dodgy though as Beveren only see about 10% of fees. Even so, they managed to qualify for the UEFA Cup (runners-up in Belgian Cup).