Seny Dieng waited four long years to make his debut for Queens Park Rangers. It has, after nearly half a dozen loans and a torrid spell at Dundee that he was thankful to leave behind, finally been worth the wait for the Hoops’ No 1.
The team have been a surprise package in this season’s Championship. Monday’s 2-1 win against Derby fired Mark Warburton’s side to third, and after years of mid-table mediocrity belief is growing that this campaign could bring a return to the Premier League for the first time since 2015.
The 27-year-old, who spent his formative years playing in the reserves at Swiss side Grasshoppers, made the goalkeeper’s jersey at Loftus Road his own at the start of last season, after spells at Whitehawk, Hampton & Richmond, Stevenage and Doncaster, as well as those six disastrous months in the Scottish Premiership.
His time at Dens Park brought just three wins and a spirit-crushing 10-game losing streak, a hefty burden to bear for a goalkeeper playing regular first-team football in the professional ranks for the first time.
Yet it served a purpose, a kind of coming of age that has stood the Swiss-born ‘keeper in good stead ever since.
“You go to a new team, it asks a lot,” Dieng tells i. “Going up to Scotland in particular and experiencing all that helped me to develop. Scotland? Let’s just say I prefer to live in London.
“After that, the transition [to the Championship] was easy. The way to get there was very long. It took four years after I signed for me to play my first game. It took a lot of patience and hard work. But the step up to the Championship? I didn’t find it hard.
“The same thing is demanded. The players are better and the game moves a lot quicker. But the demands I make of myself are the same.”
Ten years earlier, the road might have been tougher still. There has traditionally been a noticeable dearth of black goalkeepers at the top level of European club football, an absence of role models for young black footballers picking up their first pair of gloves to look to.
It’s a trend that has begun to buckle. The form of Chelsea’s Eduard Mendy this season has been just the most visible part of a picture that is quickly becoming more diverse. The Senegal international is arguably the most decorated ‘keeper at club level since the Brazilian Dida won the Champions League with AC Milan in 2007.
Leyton Orient’s goalkeeper Lawrence Vigouroux, a victim of racial abuse from a supporter after a game against Port Vale in October, spoke recently of the growing inclination amongst clubs and managers to put their trust in ‘keepers and defenders from diverse backgrounds. Now the Hoops number one has added his voice to those who have noticed the changing landscape.
“To be fair, when I was growing up there weren’t a lot of black goalkeepers playing for European clubs,” says Dieng, who was born in Zurich to a Swiss mother and a father from Senegal. “Me personally, my role model was Steve Mandanda, the Marseille and France goalkeeper. He had a season at Crystal Palace but I don’t think he got a game there.
“But I have noticed a change [during my career] and rightly so. I don’t think the colour of skin should define whether you can be trusted as a goalkeeper. Now that people are given the chance, black goalkeepers are proving that they can be reliable. It’s only right that we are trusted.”
This year has seen Dieng’s star rise further after he made his senior debut for Senegal in a friendly against Eswatini in March. The west African nation stand on the brink of reaching just their third World Cup finals – their second since 2002 – when the CAF qualifiers conclude in March. Though competition for the number one shirt couldn’t be fiercer – Mendy himself is one of two experienced goalkeepers ahead of Dieng – the prospect of joining the country of his father’s birth in Qatar is tantalising.
“It was a very proud moment to become an international for my father’s country,” he says. “I’ve wanted for many years to play for Senegal.
“Obviously the goal now is to go to Qatar. But first we’ve got the African Cup of Nations in January. And before that I am thinking about Sunday and Stoke City before I can think about the national team.”
There remains the small matter of sustaining QPR’s promotion push. With just two points separating third from sixth in the Championship, the rush for the play-offs looks like being a tight-run affair, particularly with Fulham and Bournemouth threatening to pull away at the top. One might think the pressure of keeping the chase alive could overwhelm.
“There’s no pressure,” says Dieng. “Just joy. I’m so happy to go out there and play well with this team, win as many as we can, get as many points as we can. Let’s see what we can achieve. But I don’t feel pressure.”
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/31tQZZF
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