{"id":3961,"date":"2024-01-21T15:31:20","date_gmt":"2024-01-21T15:31:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/?p=3961"},"modified":"2024-01-21T16:01:33","modified_gmt":"2024-01-21T16:01:33","slug":"afcons-established-order","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/2024\/01\/21\/afcons-established-order\/","title":{"rendered":"AFCON\u2019s Established Order?<\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Satish Sekar \u00a9 Satish Sekar (January 15th<\/sup> 2024)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unwanted Run<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Five years after leading the Desert Foxes to AFCON glory in the 32nd<\/sup> edition of the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) in Egypt, Djamel Belmadi remains in charge, but with an unwanted record \u2013 following the 1-1 draw against Angola. Algeria has now gone four matches in AFCON finals without victory since lifting the trophy in Cairo \u2013 two draws and two defeats. Then defending champions went out in the group stage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019s through ball and to give Belmadi\u2019s team the lead after 18 minutes, but the Palancas Negras pulled level from the penalty spot after substitute, Mabululu (Agostinho Crist\u00f3v\u00e3o Paci\u00eancia), had been fouled by LOSC Lille\u2019s Nabil Bentaleb \u2013 hardly his first offence \u2013 with 25 minutes of normal time remaining.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was no further scoring. Algeria had avoided defeat, but the winless run continued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

New Look Teranga Lions Maul the Scorpions<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Defending champions S\u00e9n\u00e9gal made short work of Tom Saintfiet\u2019s 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\u2019s President, Adama Barrow, intervening to ensure that adequate new arrangements were made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 Man\u00e9\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Gambia faced an even tougher task \u2013 trailing 1-0 and a man light, the champions were in no mood to fail to take full advantage,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Camara latched on to Ismaila Sarr\u2019s pass to double the Teranga Lions\u2019 lead shortly after the restart, and with a couple of minutes of normal time remaining, Camara completed his brace and S\u00e9n\u00e9gal\u2019s 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 Ciss\u00e9\u2019s new look Teranga Lions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Guinea has never reached the final of AFCON despite finishing runner-up in 1976 \u2013 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\u2019s Cameroon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cameroon\u2019s Andr\u00e9 Onana ended his international exile in the qualification rounds after he was expelled from Cameroon\u2019s squad at Qatar\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Guinea took the lead after 10 minutes after Mohamed Bayo had made a nuisance of himself and Cameroon failed to clear \u2013 it found Bayo who slotted it in between Ondoa\u2019s legs. Guinea was worth the lead, but just before half time their captain, Fran\u00e7ois Kamano received a red card after a VAR check for catching Frank Magri\u2019s Achilles tendon \u2013 an earlier foul by Magri on Kamano had earned him a yellow card. Kamano\u2019s indiscretion left his teammates with a huge task, but there were other indiscretions that went unpunished. After the break Georges Nkoudou\u2019s cross was headed in by Magri to level the scores. Other than that Nkoudou\u2019s delivery was profligate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Satish Sekar \u00a9 Satish Sekar (January 15th 2024) Unwanted Run Five years after leading the Desert Foxes to AFCON glory in the 32nd edition of [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16],"tags":[610,88,20,615,259,608,134,604,614,559,612,619,618,622,616,605,621,611,620,613,617,327,603,106,607,108,85,609],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3961"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3961"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3962,"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3961\/revisions\/3962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}