Drogba signed from Marseille for £24 million in the summer of 2004 and instantly became a key part of the Chelsea team that charged to their first league title in 50 years under Jose Mourinho. His domineering attitude and powerful presence gave defenders nightmares and the striker went on to accumulate another two Premier League titles, four FA Cup and three League Cup winners’ medals as well as a Champions League trophy as recently as last Saturday.

His goals propelled him into the hearts of the Chelsea fans but some of his on-field antics won just as many critics during his time in England. Accused of going to ground to easily and a petulant manner, even the most ardent Blues fan will admit to had been frustrated by the Ivorian’s occasional shenanigans. At times he appeared to be among the best in the world but he could just as readily be seen as a sullen striker, unwilling to perform when things did not go his way, and this season has perhaps displayed that more than any.

There was a bright sense of optimism around the club in August 2011 as Andre Villas-Boas began his new job as manager of the west-London club. Charged with the intention of displacing the ageing core of the first team in John Terry, Frank Lampard and Drogba, Villas-Boas found himself outmuscled in a changing room that lacked support for the implementation of change. Drogba found himself on the fringes of the team and his frequently negative body language failed to hide his discontent at this new role within the club.

The Portuguese manager failed to manage the transition positively and was shown the door in February. His replacement, Roberto Di Matteo, turned the fortunes around by reinstating the previously marginalised players. Chelsea managed to end the season on a high, winning both the FA Cup and Champions League with Drogba keeping up his record of scoring in every final he played in for the club. Yet the club now find themselves back at square one; relying on the influential players that they sought to remove. They have now decided it is time to let the influential striker go, and it appears to be justified.

Despite being key to winning the double this season, Drogba equalled his worst goal return in a Premier League season as he netted a measly five times. That is fewer than joint top scorers Daniel Sturridge and Lampard as well as fellow striker Fernando Torres. While his ratio of goals to games in Europe this season was better by far with six goals in eight appearances, it pointed to a decline in the consistency of the striker’s performances.

Of his five league goals this term, just one came against a team in the top half. While Drogba may be able to pull out a fantastic performance when it is required, the evidence suggests that he can no longer maintain the game-winning performances that made him a fan favourite on a regular basis

Drogba was inspirational in the 2009/10 double-winning campaign when he scored 29 league goals, but he has since failed to come close to such figures. As one of the club’s top earners, the harsh reality is that you are expected to perform at your best every week, not only on the big occasions. Whilst such experience is vital in achieving success Drogba has become somewhat of a luxury item; expensive to keep but ready to perform when needed most. However, it is simply not feasible for the club to retain such a lavish player and at 34-years-old his time is now up.

His presence at the club will no doubt be sorely missed and he will not soon be forgotten. It may not have been his finest season as a whole in the Blue of Chelsea, but the original remit for the club’s season was to phase out the ageing members of the squad and so despite his FA Cup and Champions League heroics, Drogba departed.

Do you think Chelsea were right to let Drogba go? Let me know on Twitter.

With the announcement that Kwesi Appiah will be raising funds for UK based charity TackleAfrica in the Pay2Play event in May, I thought I’d write this week’s blog about Palace players with African heritage.

Kwesi himself is of mixed Ghanian and English descent, which might explain his eagerness to get involved with the TackleAfrica. They run projects across several countries in sub-Saharan African, including Ghana, delivering HIV education to the most vulnerable of communities through the medium of football.

Kwesi has done his time around the lower echelons of the football pyramid, before hitting the big time by joining the mighty Palace. Bearing in mind the genetic make up of the areas around South London, it’s no surprise that Kwesi is the latest in a long line of Palace players with African connections. Here’s my summary of a select few:

Gavin Nebbelling

Big Neb was one of the first players that I used to watch at Palace in the late 1980′s, tightening up the defence along side legend Jim Cannon, or anchoring the midfield. For some unknown reason he always reminded me of Neighbours’ Jim Robinson, but he was actually of South African rather than Aussie descent. Nebbelling actually played his entire pro career in England, after a youth career in Johannesburg with Arcadia Shepherds. He made over 150 appearances for the Eagles before moving onto Fulham and Preston, with a smattering of loan moves in between.

Kagisho Dikgacoi

‘KG’ was Dougie Freedman’s biggest signing when he purchased him from Fulham for £600k last summer after a successful loan spell. Unfortunately the South African international has not quite lived up to his early Palace promised and appears to have been carrying a little extra timber in recent weeks. A defensive midfielder, KG has not quite demonstrated the robustness needed to play that role in the Championship, nor a particular willingness to create or score, although the highlight of his Palace career to date has to be his Zidane-esque goal last term, stumbling onto the ball and pirouetting past the keeper. An established international, KG has 39 caps for Bafana Bafana, scoring 2 goals.

Victor Moses

Victor Moses became the latest high profile graduate from the famous Crystal Palace academy to be sold onto a Premier League team when Palace slumped into administration in 2010. Moses was Palace’s most saleable asset and despite optimistic links with Barcelona and Real Madrid, ended being sold to Wigan for £2.5m. Moses blasted his way through the youth ranks at Palace having arrived from Nigeria as an orphaned asylum seeker.

He’s actually been capped at all age groups from Under 16-21 for England (golden boot winner 2007 U17 Euro Championships), but has recently been flirting with representing his country of birth, Nigeria, at senior level. He made his debut for the appropriately nickname, Eagles, in a friendly against Rwanda in February. This summer will be a big one for Victor Moses. Having recently put in some headline making performances, he has just announced his intention not to renew his contract with Wigan, leaving open the opportunity for a move to a bigger club. Barca and Real are unlikely to be calling but Liverpool, Newcastle or Swansea may come be more realistic destinations.

Wilfred Zaha

The new Victor Moses? If VicMo was the last academy product to be sold on for big bucks, Wilfred Zaha could be the next. Another African immigrant, Zaha was actually born in Cote d’Ivoire and played youth football with ASEC Mimosas who also spawned the careers of luminaries such as Bonaventure Kalou, Didier Zokora, Emmanuel Eboué, Gervinho, Salomon Kalou, and Yaya Touré. Like Moses, Zaha has been tipped for big things, and will surely end up in the Premier League before too long, with Palace, or more likely a team already there.

Bolton made an embarrassingly low bid for Zaha on transfer deadline day, but should the worst happened and Zaha is sold on, Palace fans would like to see the player have loftier aspirations than Bolton, a trotter, he ain’t. Unlike when Moses was sold, Palace aren’t in a position where they will be force to sell, and Zaha is a year into a 5 year contract. Hopefully adding to his tally of games and goals in the Championship will see him develop into a top player. Zaha has already won England U21 caps, and has been shortlisted for Team GB, but it remains to be seen whether he sticks with his current nation or returns to his homeland to realise international ambitions. By the way Owen Coyle….he’s just too good for you.

For more information on the type of work that TA do, and the areas they are involved in check out their website: http://tackleafrica.org/highlights/what-we-do/

If you want to get involved yourself, sign up for one of TackleAfrica’s Football Marathon’s this summer – 12 hour football endurance events in London, Manchester, Lancaster, Brighton and Jersey. To sponsor Kwesi, check out his justgiving site www.justgiving.com/kwesiappiah or text KAPP 38 £10 to 70070.

More info on IPay2Play here:http://www.teamimani.co.uk/ipay2play/

The tournament in Equatorial Guinea and Gabon starts on Saturday, with Ivory Coast one of the favourites.

That said, Toure is expecting a difficult campaign and feels Ghana are the team to beat.

“It’s going to be a very important tournament for our country after the hard time our country has had a few months ago,” he told Sky Sports.

“It’s going to be a really, really tough competition, playing against some brilliant teams and we just need to do our bit and then see if we can come back with the trophy.

“It is a difficult situation. For me Ghana is a more likely team to win.

“When you look at what they did at the last World Cup in South Africa, they were the best African team and at the minute they are the team everyone needs to be scared of.

“But the Ivory Coast have some great players and we know they can be one of the best teams in Africa.

“In 2006 we were in the final, in 2008 we went to the semi-final, but it is getting harder and harder each time.

“There are some big players in the tournament. The likes of Senegal, Morocco and Ghana but the Ivory Coast have some great players, but we are ready to commit to try to win this trophy,” he concluded.

Ivory Coast are alongside Sudan, Bukina Faso and Angola in Group B of the tournament.

By Gareth McKnight

As early as the 1980’s he was winning trophies. Guiding IFK Goteborg to the Swedish Cup in his first full season and completing a league, cup and UEFA Cup treble in 1982. He continued his success at Benfica, winning two titles and the Portuguese Cup in two seasons and during four years at Lazio he won Coppa Italia and Italian Super Cup twice, the Cup Winners’ Cup, the UEFA Super Cup and Serie A, only Lazio’s second Scudetto.

He has managed at some of the biggest clubs and his reign as England manager was consistent and competitive, a vast improvement on the current set up. But in recent years the cool, calm and collected Swede looks to have become complacent and laissez-faire to the game.

Since June 2008 he has been with four clubs as manager or director of football and has been relatively unsuccessful. And after being sacked by moneybags Leicester City following an unimpressive start for the promotion favourites, Sven’s passion for the game must come into question.

The start of this decline in interest can be pinpointed to Spring 2008 when former City owner Thaksin Shinawatra confirmed he would be getting rid of Eriksson after just one season at the club due to some poor results. Despite protests from the fans and the prospect of a strike, the former Thai PM could not be dissuaded and following an 8-1 humiliation by Middlesbrough, the Swede departed the club, even though he had beaten Manchester United twice that season and guided City to their biggest Premier League points total at that time.

With that decision, he seemed to lose all interest in the game and from then appeared to give up on the tradition of trophy chasing in football. After that apparent lack of respect from City chiefs, Sven has seemingly been on a mission to create a footballing legacy, taking on projects rather than management jobs.

His first port of call was the Mexico national team, who he hoped to turn into a North American superpower, where he battled rumours of division within the squad and the wrath of the fans who were upset by his appointment. In seven competitive matches he won only once, with a draw against Canada being followed by losses to Jamaica, USA and Honduras on two occasions which ultimately cost him his job after less than a year.

Even more strangely, after a “takeover” of League Two Notts County in the summer of 2009 by Munto Finance, the Swede arrived through the doors of Meadow Lane as Director of Football. He, like everybody else, had been made to believe that the world’s oldest League club had received major investment that would see them rise from the football league’s bottom tier to the Premiership in five years and wanted to be at the head of that process. Although they were promoted at the end of the season, Sven had resigned in February 2010 after it emerged that the club had large debts and an unpaid tax bill because the owners were not what they had claimed.

After waiving the right to a multi-million pound pay off to secure the Magpie’s future, he was appointed manager of the Ivory Coast for the 2010 World Cup. With stars like Didier Drogba and the Toure brothers, Sven was hoping to make Pele’s comments come true and get an African team to the World Cup semi-finals for the first time. This has probably been his biggest success in recent years, having brought organisation and balance to a team full of flair and had it not been for being grouped with Brazil and Portugal his side may well have progressed.

Finally, last October he was brought to the Walkers Stadium by Thai-led consortium Asian Football Investments, with the task of saving them from relegation and turning them into title winners. He was able to complete the first part of the plan, guiding them to the brink of the play-offs before falling away at the end of the season. But having spent huge sums of money over the summer on Matt Mills and Jermaine Beckford among others, he was unable to live up to expectations and left with the club 13th in the table.

These recent jobs make Sven look like an owner of the game Football Manager, trying to take his team from underdogs to the dominant force. But so far, all his efforts have been in vain.

It is a sorry sight that somebody so successful is now looking for jobs outside the top flight to reignite his interest in the game.

Is Sven bored or do you have another opinion? Leave a comment or follow me on Twitter @jrobbins1991.

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The 16-year-old currently plays for Siena, however has expressed his desire to move to the white side of North London. Spurs have been relatively quiet in the transfer window up until now, with most of the attention on the club surrounding the possible departure of Luka Modric to Chelsea. Speculation over the futures of Roman Pavlyuchenko, Jermanine Defoe, and Robbie Keane is bound to intensify as Spurs look to sign the teenage superstar by the end of the transfer window.

Coulibaly has impressed particularly at international level and has been labelled the ‘new Drogba’ by many of his admirers. The teenager scored 9 goals in 4 games at the U-17 World Cup this year making him the highest goal scorer of the tournament. However, despite an apparent desire amongst all parties involved for a transfer of around £2m to take place, a deal is by no means imminent at the moment.

Because Coulibilay is not old enough to be granted a work permit in England he can only arrive in the country with his family. The teenager is having to wait for his father to be granted an Italian passport before moving to London, and this process can take a number of weeks. Spurs will be desperately hoping that this can be arranged before the transfer window closes on the 31st August.

Lille striker Gervinho is set to announce this week which club he will join in the summer. The player has admitted a liking for the Premier League with Newcastle planning a bid of around £9.5m but there is also likely to be interest from Liverpool and Arsenal. There is also likely to be interest from Spain and Germany, so there is certainly no shortage of offers for talented Ivorian.

Gervinho’s actual name is Gervais Yao Kouassi who plays as striker for Lille in French Lique 1 – although the player can also play as a winger. Gervinho started his professional career in Belgium playing for Beveren – where he scored 14 league goals in around 2 seasons. In 2007, he moved to France and played for Le Mans and impressed despite the fact that he only scored 8 goals from 59 appearances.

In May, 2008 Gervinho was linked with a move away from Le Mans with other French teams interested but Arsenal were also linked. After hearing about the interest from Arsenal Gervinho suggested it would be a dream to play for the North London club. However, despite the continued interest from Arsenal his next move occurred in France from Le Mans to Lille for a fee of 8 million Euros.

Since moving to Lille Gervinho has really started to fulfil that potential with his goal-scoring; this season hitting 15 goals. The 24 year old striker has also made a number of appearances for his country, since making his debut in 2007. Since then he has made 19 appearances and scored 5 goals. Despite interest from a number of clubs reports in France suggest that Arsenal is the team he is most likely to join. It will certainly be interesting to see how he gets on in the Premier League if those reports proved to be correct. However, the African players that have come in to the English top flight have generally done well – so there is no reason to think Gervinho will be any different.

Check out this video on Gervinho:

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But for those actually living in the capital, and the rest of what is now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo, 1974 is meaningful for an altogether different sporting occasion. That summer, Zaire became the first team from sub-Saharan Africa to qualify for the World Cup, but their players and fans recall the tournament in West Germany with mixed feelings, despite the achievement of being the first black African representatives on global football’s grandest stage. “I was very proud, and still am, to have represented Black and Central Africa at the World Cup,” says former defender, Mwepu Ilunga. “But we had the erroneous belief that we would be returning from the World Cup as millionaires. We got back home without a penny in our pockets. Look at me now, I’m living like a tramp,” an incensed Ilunga told BBC Sport.

The retired right full-back remains bitter about several aspects of the ‘Leopards’’ campaign, most notably the fact that Zairean officials are alleged to have pocketed his and his team-mates’ wages for the tournament, something Ilunga would only discover mid-way through the group stages. The opening game saw Zaire defeated 2-0 by Scotland, but Ilunga claims that the players were told that they wouldn’t be paid at all, prior to the next match against Yugoslavia. “Before the Yugoslavia match we learnt that we were not going to be paid, so we refused to play,” claims the defender, who has since become a cult footballing icon for running out of the defensive wall to kick a Brazilian free-kick away in Zaire’s final first-round fixture. Unfortunately, the Leopards were thrashed 9-0 by Yugoslavia, having been persuaded at the last moment to attend the encounter, a result that did immense damage to the image of African football.

Following the humiliating defeat at the hands of Yugoslavia, the late Mobutu Sese Seko, Zaire’s leader at the time, intervened directly in the team’s affairs. “After the match, he sent his presidential guards to threaten us,” remembers Ilunga. “They closed the hotel to all journalists and said that if we lost 4-0 to Brazil, none of us would be able to return home.” The unforgivable treatment of Zaire’s players at the World Cup was in stark contrast to the way they had been received following qualification, when Mobutu is said to have gifted each team member a car and a house. “Mobutu’s generals were so jealous of the gifts we were given that he had to buy them a car each, to keep them quiet,” Ilunga said. In their last game, Zaire lost 3-nil to Brazil, which allowed the team to return home free from the fear of retribution, but Africa’s first World Cup showing saw the Leopards record an unenviable statistic of conceding 14 goals without scoring a single one.

Fast forward almost exactly 36 years and 120 minutes, and Africa’s sixth and longest-surviving representative at the 2010 edition of FIFA’s esteemed international tournament are simply a 12-yard spot-kick from reaching the semi-final stage, a watershed moment in the continent’s history. By this point, the global audience had thrown their full support behind Ghana’s ‘Black Stars’ following Luis Suarez’s deplorable goal-line hand-ball, which prevented the West Africans’ justified progression. Their talisman, Asamoah Gyan, who had scored in three of the previous four games, struck the cross-bar with the game’s final kick, and despite redeeming himself by converting in the subsequent penalty-shootout, Ghana were eliminated following a 4-2 reverse.

The country’s desolate onlookers were at least able to assess their players’ performances with a considerable element of pride, despite Ghana just failing to erode the semi-final barrier which no African side has yet been able to. But what are the factors which have contributed to the vastly altered assessment of African national teams? Previously, one or two representatives at international level would be perceived, by the European media at least, as negligible whipping-boys, with less than technically-adept playing staff. This is clearly no longer a widely-held view, evidenced by the number of African players not only competing in Europe at club level, but also at the very highest echelons of European competition.

The succeeding tournament hosted by Korea and Japan was remembered as much for Senegal’s impressive maiden appearance at a World Cup as for Ronaldo’s relentless form, as Frenchman, Bruno Metsu, led the ‘Lions of Teranga’ to the quarter-finals and a heroes welcome in the capital, Dakar, upon their post-elimination arrival. The acceleration of this trend reached a potentially damaging juncture last summer, when five out of Africa’s six attending nations elected foreign supervision prior to the continent’s first hosting of a World Cup in South Africa. Algeria were the only African representative with a home-grown head coach, – Rabah Saadane – but Nigeria’s conduct in releasing manager, Shaibu Amodu, three months before the tournament highlights a much broader concern within African football. “A lot of people [in Africa] still have the mentality that the European knows more,” said Thomas Mlambo, a distinguished television presenter and analyst on the South Africa-based sports network, SuperSport. The fact that Amodu was sacked following not only the remarkable achievement in qualifying Nigeria for the World Cup, but also in leading them to a third placed finish at the African Cup of Nations last year, emphasizes this confusing ‘mentality’ which inspired the Nigerian Football Federation to replace the 52 year-old with Lars Lagerback, who was only available to take the helm having failed to guide Sweden to the finals tournament.

Many will have questioned the decision to remove a coach who had spent two years conditioning the team, and succeeded in meeting his short-term objectives, with a manager who had recently failed to accomplish a similar target and with almost no knowledge of the country’s footballing traditions and philosophy. Amodu was actually sacked in a replica scenario prior to the 2002 World Cup and is unlikely to accept a fifth stint as Nigerian head coach should the opportunity arise. An Ivory Coast fan described the unusual racial barrier most African coaches face, and perhaps goes some way to explaining the seemingly irrational choices many African football federations have made recently: “The players have more respect for whites,” says Bienvenue Kehedi, a 26 year-old student in Abidjan. “An Ivorian can’t assert their will against the players because he tries to keep on the side of all the players and is scared of taking tough decisions.” Although European leadership may have assisted a few African nations in achieving their World Cup aspirations before last summer, the continent’s relatively poor showing at the 2010 tournament was interpreted by many as a sign of African football’s static development based on the dependence on foreign coaches.

The 1995 World, European and African Player of the Year, and Liberian legend, George Weah, has claimed that overseas influences are only serving to harm the progression of the sport in Africa. “In 1999, I addressed international coaches at FIFA and I said it; they come to Africa to coach but they are not the right people for the African team because they are not developing our players, they are just making the money, come for vacation and that’s it,” the former AC Milan forward stated.
Weah implied that the Ivory Coast’s, Cameroon’s, Algeria’s, Nigeria’s and hosts South Africa’s premature elimination should act as a wake-up call to provoke a change to the continent’s process of pursuing European management. “The European coaches are not the best for Africa. Some agree with me, some they don’t. Look at the statistics of the World Cup, since Africa started hiring European coaches, only the Africans coaches have done well,” Weah concluded.

The three-time African Player of the Year (1989, 1994 and 1995) may be right in some respects, but the continual appointment of foreign coaches embodies a natural corollary to African players’ increased presence in the European leagues. The employment of European coaches makes sense considering a large number of modern African national teams consist of mainly European-based players, evinced by a Sven Goran-Eriksson selected Ivory Coast squad containing just one Ivorian-based player out of 23 – the third-choice goalkeeper. There is certainly a growing feeling amongst many Africans that a change in organizational structure at the Confederation of African Football (CAF) is required to assist the development of the presently insufficient, and future, African coaches. With a campaign being led by Weah, arguably the continent’s most recognized footballing and political exemplar, it is not inconceivable to imagine prospective World Cups being contested by African nations guided by African managers. “We have to believe in ourselves, believe in our people. Give them the support to be trained and to develop our teams,” pleads Weah. “The CAF needs to wake-up, we need an institution for coaching in Africa. Our people don’t need to go to Europe, they need to stay in Africa and train.” Weah is certainly fighting a valid cause, because in spite of Africa’s varying successes under foreign managers, it would be catastrophic to witness a repeat of Ghana’s Serbian coach, Milovan Rajevac’s, inexcusable despair following the Black Stars’ 1-0 victory over Serbia in last years’ tournament. Africa’s sudden and meteoric ascension to the top of European football’s consciousness must not halt now, and with a burgeoning pool of talent swarming every region on the continent, it is time for the national federations to cultivate the hidden coaching talent to avoid future disappointment, and maintain the extraordinary progression.

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FootballFanCast.com WORLD Exclusive, Robbie Savage’s Face in a Baby Scan

Stamford Bridge in March last year offered its regular exhibition of Champions’ League knockout football as Chelsea welcomed back Jose Mourinho, who slipped away at the end of an expertly masterminded Inter victory without celebrating, as promised, in view of the fans who once worshipped him and would undoubtedly love the chance to do so again. Despite the customary Mourinho sub-plot escalation, the global audience wasn’t salivating at the Portuguese coach’s wisdom in its entirety, as over 4,000 miles away in East Africa, Kenya’s burgeoning legion of football followers were patiently anticipating a far more poignant appearance.

With five minutes remaining, and a 3-1 Inter lead seemingly enough to send the Italians through to the quarter-finals, Mourinho removed Wesley Sneijder, and replaced the Dutch forward with Nairobi-born Macdonald Mariga, the first Kenyan representative in the history of the Champions’ League. Mariga’s story isn’t all together unfamiliar, although it has been revealed this year that the midfielder earns $1.3million a year, the most of any East African player by a distance. But what encouraged Mariga’s journey from his agricultural background in Nakuru, playing in front of a diminutive crowd for Kenya’s national military team, to securing the attention of hundreds of millions of spectators from all corners of the globe, not to mention sharing occupational residency with Samuel Eto’o and Didier Drogba?

The aforementioned experienced contrasting emotions that night not least due to the result, but also since Drogba was dismissed for an unnecessary assault on Thiago Motta following Eto’o’s match-winner. Nevertheless, both had already cemented their statuses in their home continent as both athletic and political icons long before Mariga confirmed his place amongst his country’s most admired sporting paladins. The strikers are hailed as much for their charitable endowments as for their celebrity, with Drogba immortalized in the Ivory Coast for effectively ending five years of civil war, but how did either achieve such influential prominence having emerged from the humblest of beginnings? Youth academies have naturally played a significant role in exporting the continent’s precocious talents for the opportunities of greater exposure playing in Europe’s wealthier leagues, but their structure and organization is far more complex than the development facilities Premier League fans are used to. On the surface, this process appears to assist young Africans in the pursuit of their footballing ambitions, but the reality is far more brutal, and the coordination of several academies is only serving to harm the future of football in Africa.

Since the turn of the millennium, European fans, and particularly those who follow Premier League clubs, have witnessed a sudden infiltration of Ivorian talent, principally attributed to the MimoSifcom Academy near the country’s largest city, Abidjan. MimoSifcom is the official development facility of ASEC Mimosas, perhaps the Ivory Coast’s most famous footballing institution, and represents one of the few academies which demonstrate an authentically-African philosophy. The academy was one of the first structures of its kind in sub-Saharan Africa when founded in 1994, and its extant values mirror those of its European counterparts in that MimoSifcom provide hopeful thirteen to 17 year-olds with an academic as well as footballing education. The idea, as with any academy of this nature, is to promote promising candidates in to the Mimosas first-team, but with the mid-term intention to export the most gifted individuals to Europe in order to recover the costs of training young players and to sustain a steady flow of replacements for the successful graduates.

Continued on Page TWO

Ivory Coast international Gervinho grabbed a double either side of an Eden Hazard strike at the Stadium Nord Lille Metropole to extend their side’s unbeaten run to 10 matches in the league.

A loss for Lille would have allowed Paris Saint-Germain, Rennes and Lyon to cut the gap at the top of the table to just one point, and 13th-placed Nancy did well to keep their hosts scoreless in the first half.

But Lille did not have to wait long for a goal after the break, with Gervinho finding the back of the net just two minutes into the second period.

Two minutes later Gervinho turned provider, setting up Belgian attacker Hazard for Lille’s second.

And fittingly it was the Ivorian who sealed the match for Lille, netting his 10th goal of the season in the 61st minute to round out a comfortable victory for Rudi Garcia’s men.

Goals from Dirnei Renato, Frederic Kanoute and Alexis Ruano at the Estadio Ramon Sanchez Pizjuan helped Seville – who beat Atletico Madrid 2-0 in last season’s final – to a 6-3 aggregate win.

The quarter-final was there for the taking after a 3-3 draw in the first leg at Villarreal’s El Madrigal on January 12, but it was the hosts who seized control in the second encounter.

Renato put Seville ahead with a tap in after just seven minutes.

The veteran Brazil international smacked the ball home inches before it crossed the line after Alvaro Negredo chipped Villarreal goalkeeper Diego Lopez.

Seville then struck twice in the space of three second-half minutes to put the outcome beyond doubt.

Both came from corners, delivered by Ivory Coast international Romaric.

The first was converted by former Tottenham striker Kanoute on 47 minutes, before Alexis found the net by the same route shortly afterwards.

In more positive news for the winners, defender Sergio Sanchez made his return to the Seville team for the first time in over a year following heart surgery.

“I felt very well and very comfortable,” Sanchez said.

“I want to thank my team mates who have made everything easier for me.”

Seville will face either Real Madrid or a rematch of the final against Atletico in the last four.

The capital rivals meet in their second leg on Thursday, with Real holding a 3-1 lead from the first match at the Santiago Bernabeu.