By Satish Sekar © Satish Sekar (January 15^th 2024)

Unwanted Run

Five years after leading the Desert Foxes to AFCON glory in the 32^nd edition of the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) in Egypt, Djamel Belmadi remains in charge, but with an unwanted record – following the 1-1 draw against Angola. Algeria has now gone four matches in AFCON finals without victory since lifting the trophy in Cairo – two draws and two defeats. Then defending champions went out in the group stage.

They are keen to return to past triumphs, albeit recent past. One of the heroes of the 2019 triumph Baghdad Bounedjah latched on to Youcef Belaili’s through ball and to give Belmadi’s team the lead after 18 minutes, but the Palancas Negras pulled level from the penalty spot after substitute, Mabululu (Agostinho Cristóvão Paciência), had been fouled by LOSC Lille’s Nabil Bentaleb – hardly his first offence – with 25 minutes of normal time remaining.

There was no further scoring. Algeria had avoided defeat, but the winless run continued.

New Look Teranga Lions Maul the Scorpions

Defending champions Sénégal made short work of Tom Saintfiet’s Gambia after their preparations were savaged first by a boycott of training over unpair qualification bonuses and then massive problems with their plane, necessitating an emergency return, followed by the Gambia’s President, Adama Barrow, intervening to ensure that adequate new arrangements were made.

The drama over Gambia hoped to build on their impressive performance on debut two years ago. Their start could hardly have been worse. Pape Gueye opened the scoring after just 4 minutes, profiting from Sadio Mané’s lay-off. It got worse with the break approaching as Ebou Adams was shown a straight red card after a VAR check showed that he had caught the Lamine Camara on his heel with his studs in added time at the end of the first half.

The Gambia faced an even tougher task – trailing 1-0 and a man light, the champions were in no mood to fail to take full advantage,

Camara latched on to Ismaila Sarr’s pass to double the Teranga Lions’ lead shortly after the restart, and with a couple of minutes of normal time remaining, Camara completed his brace and Sénégal’s conclusive victory after impressive play by Iliman Ndiaye created the opportunity for the FC Metz youngster, who celebrated the end of his teens at the beginning of this month, to announce his arrival in Aliou Cissé’s new look Teranga Lions.

Guinea has never reached the final of AFCON despite finishing runner-up in 1976 – a strange story because of a new format for the tournament that was never repeated. The Syli National (National Elephants) took an early lead against Rigobert Song’s Cameroon.

Cameroon’s André Onana ended his international exile in the qualification rounds after he was expelled from Cameroon’s squad at Qatar’s World Cup. However, Onana chose to depart late in order to play for Manchester United against Wigan in the FA Cup to avoid the risk of losing his place to Altay Bayindir, who has played more competitive minutes in Britain for Turkey this season than for Manchester United.

He arrived in Yamoussoukro late as his private plane was diverted to Abidjan due to bad weather, resulting in a three-hour car journey. Onana arrived a couple of hours before the start and to his chagrin was left out of the squad entirely. He was replaced by his cousin, Fabrice Ondoa. He was reassured by El Hadji Diouf after questioning why he took a private plane if he wasn’t going to play. Song, apparently, never intended to play him as he had not been part of the camp, and had not trained with the team.

Guinea took the lead after 10 minutes after Mohamed Bayo had made a nuisance of himself and Cameroon failed to clear – it found Bayo who slotted it in between Ondoa’s legs. Guinea was worth the lead, but just before half time their captain, François Kamano received a red card after a VAR check for catching Frank Magri’s Achilles tendon – an earlier foul by Magri on Kamano had earned him a yellow card. Kamano’s indiscretion left his teammates with a huge task, but there were other indiscretions that went unpunished. After the break Georges Nkoudou’s cross was headed in by Magri to level the scores. Other than that Nkoudou’s delivery was profligate.