Eric Descombes
Football player
Eric Descombes (born June 25, 1971) is a former French-American football player, who was naturalized by Mauritania, and participated to the World Cup qualifiers for Germany 2006, with that country. He spent his career between Europe and the USA with clubs such as Chico Rooks, Cascade Surge, Sacramento Scorpions, Southend United, New Orleans Storm, Cincinnati Riverhawks and Indiana Blast. He capped twice for the Mauritanian national team and played in over 169 games at the professional level, scoring 16 times.He started his professional coaching career in the A-League with the Cincinnati Riverhawks as a player-assistant coach and with the Indiana Blast as a head coach. He was the head coach and GM with Africa Sports d'Abidjan in Ivory Coast (2012/2013 season).He was named as the new national team coach and technical director of the Central African Republic, shortly after. The team participated in the CEMAC Cup in December 2013, while the civil war just had started. He led the team to a final appearance, after defeating Chad (1–0), Congo (1-0) and Cameroon (1-0), but falling to host country Gabon (0–2) in the final.