Burkina Faso national football team

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

(Redirected from Upper Volta national football team)

Jump to: navigation, search

Burkina Faso

Nickname(s)

Les Etalons
(The Stallions)

Association

Fédération Burkinabé
de Foot-Ball

Confederation

CAF (Africa)

Head coach

Home stadium

BFA

113

Highest FIFA ranking

54 (May 2007)

Lowest FIFA ranking

127 (December 1993)

Elo ranking





Home colours





Away colours

First international

Upper Volta 5 - 4 Gabon

(Madagascar; 13 April 1960)

Biggest win

Burkina Faso 4 - 0 Mozambique

(Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso; 7 June 2003)

Biggest defeat

Algeria 7 - 0 Upper Volta

(Algeria; 30 August 1981)

African Nations Cup

Appearances

6 (First in 1978)

Best result

Fourth place, 1998

The Burkina Faso national football team, nicknamed Les Etalons (The Stallions), is the national team of Burkina Faso and is controlled by the Fédération Burkinabé de Foot-Ball. They were known as the Upper Volta national football team until 1984, when Upper Volta became Burkina Faso. Their best finish in the African Nations Cup was fourth in 1998, when they hosted the tournament.

1 Last and next games
2 History
3 World Cup record
4 African Nations Cup record
5 Notable Players
6 Current squad
7 External links

Last game: Senegal 5-1 Burkina Faso - Dakar, Senegal - 08 September 2007. (CAF African Nations Cup 2008)

Next game: Tunisia - Burkina Faso - Tunis, Tunisia - 31 May 2008. (FIFA World Cup 2010)

The Stallions of Burkina Faso received an unexpected free pass into the group stage of the 2006 FIFA World Cup qualification process, when their opening round contestant, the Central African Republic, withdrew from the competition. This gave the West Africans, who were at that stage ranked 14th on the continent, the certainty that their name would be in the hat when the Preliminary Draw for the 2006 FIFA World Cup Germany was made. They got off to a flying start, beating Ghana 1-0 in their opening match and laying down a marker for their Group 2 adversaries South Africa, Cape Verde Islands, Congo DR and Uganda.

Football fans in Burkina Faso were full of optimism based on the rise of the Stallions towards the top of African football in recent years.

Burkina Faso's rise started with the formation of the country's football academy, Planète Champion Internationale. Results were almost immediate, as the country's youngsters finished a highly credible third at the FIFA U-17 World Championship Trinidad & Tobago 2001.

The victory train began to come off the rails with two defeats to Cape Verde, and with a record of two wins and three losses, Burkina Faso were up against it at the half-way stage. Frenchman Bernard Simondi took over the coaching reins from Ivica Todorov and made the team harder to beat at home, even recording wins over South Africa and Congo DR, but in the end it was not quite enough, and the likes of Abdoulaye Cisse, Moumouni Dagano, and Wilfred Sanou went no further in the competition.