AFCON ticked all the boxes H-METRO
THE latest edition of AFCON delivered on all fronts and there are some analysts who are already calling it the best Nations Cup tournament of alltime.
It was a show which had everything one could ask for — good crowds, quality football, drama and great refereeing standards, which were even praised by powerful voices like Gary Neville.
This was an AFCON when the underdogs came to the party and showed that the gap, which used to exist between them and the traditional heavyweights, has disappeared.
Morocco came in as favourites, after their sensational run to become the first African nation to reach the semi-finals of the FIFA World Cup in Qatar just two years ago.
The Atlas Lions were the number one ranked team going into the tournament but they were knocked out by South Africa with Bafana Bafana, fielding a team dominated by local players, going on to take the bronze medal.
Senegal were the defending champions but they also struggled, especially in the knockout phase, and crashed out in the Round of 16 after a surprise defeat to hosts Cote d’Ivoire.
Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia are all former winners with a good pedigree when it comes to the Nations Cup but they all struggled to make an impact and the Pharaohs needed a last-gasp Mohammed Salah goal to even salvage a point against Mozambique.
Fans love sport when it produces such Cinderella giant-killing tales and Equatorial Guinea’s four-goal demolition of the Ivorians was as good as it gets.
It led the hosts to fire their coach, Frenchman Jean-Louis Gasset, as there was an expectation that they would not make it into the knockout stages.
However, they made it as the best of the teams, which finished in third place and Emerse Fae, a local coach, was given the nod to lead the team for the remainder of the tournament.
Fae, somehow, managed to transform the Elephants and when the curtain came down on the tournament on Sunday, he had led his country to the Promised Land.
He is the third local coach to guide his country to success in the Nations Cup in three successive tournaments.
Djamel Belmadi led Algeria to success at the 2019 Nations Cup while Aliou Cisse guided Senegal to success two years later.
We were not at the AFCON in Cote d’Ivoire because of the FIFA ban but there are lessons we should pick from there, including trusting our own coaches to also play a big role in the affairs of our Warriors.
We are a good team and the Nigerian side, which went all the way to the final, is the same team which needed a lucky break, an offside which the match officials didn’t pick, to force a 1-1 draw with us in Rwanda in November.
This means we can compete at this level but we have to get our house in order first and it’s sad that we are not seeing any movement on the ZIFA side to give us hope for the future.