Interview with Stefano Cusin, the Italian globetrotter in search of Africa

In an interview as head coach of the South Sudan national football team, globetrotting Italian coach Stefano Cusin opens up about his experiences around the world, his beliefs and his love of the challenge in a country still in difficulty following a struggle for independence and civil war.

During Most of a playing career that spanned more than two decades, James Moga was, on a global scale, a nondescript striker playing on nondescript teams. A perhaps more charitable way of describing him is as a journeyman footballer who played for fourteen clubs in six countries. And yet, it was not a career without remarkable moments.

There were league titles, promotions and cup successes everywhere. But any player can boast about it. Few people, however, will have experienced anything like Moga's career highlights which came on July 10, 2011, when he scored the first ever goal for the South Sudan national team in a a friendly match against Kenyan Premier League side Tusker, and a year later when he scored again on their official debut against Uganda. To this day, he is considered one of the best players in his country.

However, the mere fact that he remains South Sudan's top scorer with six goals in eighteen games speaks volumes about football in the country. Twice, Africa's youngest nation has qualified for the qualifying group stage of the Africa Cup of Nations, but the results there have been largely dismal: 11 defeats and only one victory.

However, that doesn't mean they don't have big dreams. At the end of their last qualifying trip, the Football Association of South Sudan started looking for a new coach, and eventually their choice fell on Italian Stefano Cusin.

"My previous two jobs hadn't gone well for me; I was in the right leagues but at the wrong club," Cusin says as his team prepares to face Djibouti in Uganda (a match that they would win 1-0)." After these two bad experiences, I was looking for a project, so when a French agent told me that South Sudan was looking for a coach to take care not only of the main national team but also of all the...