Harry Redknapp: Senegal boss Aliou Cisse was a natural leader for me at Pompey… England are in for a World Cup scrap

LOOK around any dressing room and there are always one or two who are destined to be a manager.

They don’t have to be at the end of their playing days, but there’s just something about them which tells you, even at that stage.

Simon JonesHarry Redknapp writes exclusively for Sun Sport[/caption]

GettyRedknapp signed Aliou Cisse for Portsmouth almost 20 years ago[/caption]

Aliou Cisse was one of them, as I discovered when I signed him for Portsmouth nearly 20 years ago.

Cisse was captain of a great Senegal team which beat France in the 2002 World Cup, when they reached the quarter-finals – something they’ll repeat if they get past England on Sunday.

Lots of them got moves to the Premier League on the back of the tournament.

The likes of Salif Diao, El Hadji Diouf and Cisse himself all ended up over here that summer.

Aliou joined Birmingham, so he’d had a couple of years over here when I signed him, and had already proved he’d adapted to a different lifestyle, culture and football.

But I didn’t realise what a great natural leader he was…although it didn’t take long. Pretty much as soon as he walked through the door, to be honest.

Look, he was never the classiest footballer in the world, and never the smoothest on the ball.

He had his limitations, he knew that better than anyone, but you’d go a long way to find someone who worked harder to get the best out of themselves.

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For him that meant covering every blade of grass, charging into as many challenges as he could – winning most of them – and never giving you less than 100 per cent.

If anything I had to tell him to ease off a bit, because there was the risk he’d end up getting booked or sent off.

He got a red card on his first game for Birmingham because he was so desperate to show what he was about – which was steaming into every tackle.

There are some players who question everything you ask of them, but there was never a hint of that with him. He might want to know why, but only because he wanted to learn.

It was almost like you’d wind him, send him out and for 90 minutes he’d be Mr Perpetual Motion, putting people under pressure every time they had the ball.

Yes, he overstepped the mark occasionally, but that wasn’t because he was nasty. In fact you won’t find a more smashing, respectful lad.

He had a huge personality, so bubbly and outgoing…and yes, he had the barnet back then as well!

I actually managed him twice at Portsmouth, because he was still there when I went back, and he didn’t play a great deal in the second spell.

We had Sean Davis, Pedro Mendes, Andres D’Alessandro, plenty of options, and we couldn’t keep everyone. So eventually he ended up moving to Sedan.

But he never let me down and when you consider we had some huge characters, Aliou was as big as anyone.

You don’t captain your country in anything, let alone the World Cup without that, whoever it is, let alone the defending champions.

So to do so against a French side which contained Thierry Henry, Marcel Desailly, Patrick Vieira, all the top boys, tells you what he was like.

He never stopped as a player, and watching the way he bounces around on the touchline in Qatar, it’s the same as a manager.

So don’t think England will have it all their own way when they play Cisse’s Senegal for a place in the quarter-finals.

It’s not going to be a tap-in, they are going to have to fight for everything, and if they’re not up for a scrap, Senegal will take full advantage.

I do expect us to come out on top in the end – but England will know they’ve been in a scrap, believe me. Their manager will make sure of that.