At the 2002 World Cup Senegal beat the holders, France, in the opening match before reaching the quarter-finals. Their captain then coaches the current side

“Really we cannot thank him enough,” said West Ham’s Cheikhou Kouyaté. “In 2012 no one knew me nor Sadio Mané. He came to find me in Belgium and went to find Sadio from FC Metz. He’s close to the players. He finds the right words to really motivate us.”

It is hard not to agree with the Senegal captain’s assessment of Aliou Cissé. Sixteen years after the former midfield enforcer for Birmingham and Portsmouth led his country past the holders, France, in the opening match and into an unlikely place in the World Cup quarter-finals the suave and sophisticated 42-year-old is preparing for the Lions of Teranga’s big return.

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Cissé, appointed to replace Alain Giresse in 2015 after a successful spell in charge of Senegal’s Under-23 side, whom he led to the last eight of the 2012 Olympics, is the lowest-paid of the 32 managers in Russia by some distance with a salary of £175,000 compared with Germany’s Joachim Löw at almost £4m.

Despite facing some criticism for adopting a pragmatic approach to qualifying with a squad having an array of attacking talent including Liverpool’s Mané, Keita Baldé of Monaco and the rising star Ismaila Sarr of Rennes, there is a quiet confidence at home that history may be about to repeat itself.

“This is a great generation,” Cissé said during last year’s Africa Cup of Nations, when Mané’s penalty shootout miss in the quarter-finals led to them bowing out against Cameroon. “What we’re changing is the mindset. It’s not just about playing a pass or some technical skill, it’s about raising the whole level of African football. That’s our objective.”

His coaching journey began a few months after the defeat by Turkey in the 2002 quarter-finals when Cissé lost 11 members of his family in the Joola ferry disaster. In total nearly 1,900 people perished in what remains one of the worst maritime accidents in history. “Senegal is only a small country,” said Oumar Ndiaye, an official at the Senegalese Football Federation. “More than 1,000 people died and everyone knows someone who knows someone. We are all affected by something like this.”

Cissé took a leading role in organising a charity match against Nigeria to honour the victims, arranging for both sets of players to attend, coaching the Senegal team and donating £5,000 to the cause from his own pocket.

He had arrived in England by then after joining Birmingham from Montpellier, having played for Lille and Paris Saint-Germain. He spent two years in the Midlands before moving to Portsmouth but, by the time Cissé was invited to become the coach of Senegal’s Under-23 side three years after retirement in 2009, the success of Korea and Japan had become a distant memory for a country that has continued to produce top-level players despite failing to win a major international title.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Cissé challenges Thierry Henry during Senegal’s famous win in 2002. Photograph: Kai Pfaffenbach/Reuters

Their absence from the 2010 and 2013 Cup of Nations was a new low, although the performances of Cissé’s side at London 2012 hinted at a brighter future as an exciting young team featuring Kouyaté, Mané, Crystal Palace’s Pape Souaré and Everton’s Idrissa Gana Gueye lost to the eventual winners, Mexico, in the quarter-finals after extra time. After the 1-1 draw against Great Britain in the group stages Ryan Giggs accused Senegal of making “a few naughty challenges”, adding that “the No 10 [Mané] would have been sent off three times” in a Premier League game.

“I’m surprised, considering it’s Great Britain talking about physicality and fighting spirit,” Cissé shot back. “I hope they will recognise our technical qualities a bit more. Considering my team has not played together for so long, their standard of play is a very good omen for their future.”

That willingness to stand up for his players has become a hallmark, as have the designer glasses and always immaculate dreadlocks. A backroom team made up of several of his teammates from 2002 such as Omar Daf, Lamine Diatta and the goalkeeping coach Tony Sylva have helped engender the kind of spirit present under the former manager Bruno Metsu, who died from cancer in 2013. Cissé was coached by Metsu at the start of his career during spells at Lille and Sedan and cites the Frenchman as his inspiration for going into management.

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“It was after meeting him that I knew this was my vocation,” he said. “Bruno was way ahead of his time and he managed to weld teams wherever he went.”

Should Senegal make it past Poland, Colombia and Japan in Group H, a potential meeting with England looms large in the last 16. As he showed in 2012, that would hold no fear for Cissé.