{"id":4484,"date":"2025-09-24T11:53:49","date_gmt":"2025-09-24T10:53:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/?p=4484"},"modified":"2025-09-24T11:53:50","modified_gmt":"2025-09-24T10:53:50","slug":"chan-finalists-decided","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/2025\/09\/24\/chan-finalists-decided\/","title":{"rendered":"CHAN Finalists Decided<\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Satish Sekar \u00a9 Satish Sekar (August 26th<\/sup> 2025)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Upset Guaranteed<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Twice African Nations Championship winners, Morocco, will have the opportunity to win an historic third CHAN championship on August 30th<\/sup>. The Atlas Lions defeated S\u00e9n\u00e9gal\u2019s Teranga Lions 5-3 on penalties after a 1-1 draw at Kampala\u2019s Mandela National Stadium. They earned the right to contest this CHAN Final against Madagascar\u2019s Barrea, who will make history whatever the result on Saturday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Madagascar\u2019s 60-year-old coach, Romuald Rakotondrabe, has already delivered his country\u2019s best ever finish in African competition. Their AFCON campaign of 2019 surprised many \u2013 CAF translators mangled my question to Malagasy former CAF President Ahmad Ahmad[1]<\/a> \u2013 but this was the greatest achievement the Barrea had ever achieved until now, despite winning the bronze medal two years ago in Algeria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regardless of whether they beat Morocco in Saturday\u2019s CHAN Final or not, the Barrea have never before appeared in the final of an African football showpiece. Madagascar dispatched Sudan 1-0 at Dar es Salaam\u2019s Benjamin Mkapa Stadium in the first of today\u2019s semi-finals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rakotondrabe\u2019s Local Barrea<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Barrea\u2019s coach has a mild manner, at least with journalists. As a former player, he knows all about players\u2019 likes and dislikes. He imposed his personality and philosophy on the team to bring them to the brink of greatness. Despite being reduced to ten men after 79 minutes \u2013 Fenohasina Gilles Razafimaro was sent off for a second bookable offence, the Barrea rallied in extra time to seal their ticket to Nairobi\u2019s CHAN conclusion with less than five minutes of extra time remaining \u2013 Toky Niaina Rakotondraibe scored the precious winner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Michel Ramandimbisoa, affectionately known as \u2018Toldo\u2019 once again performed well to prevent Sudan taking a first-half lead through Mohamed Tia Asad and Mazin Al Bahli. Neither Razafimaro nor Lalaina Rafanomezantsoa were able to convert the best of the Barrea\u2019s opportunities in the first half either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Walieldin Khdir had the best opportunity of the match, but to the frustration of the Falcons of Jediane, his header failed to break the deadlock. With time running out and penalties a distinct possibility, Rafanomezantsoa threaded it through to Rakotondraibe and the COSFA Analamanga attacker shot past the crestfallen Mohamed Abooja to score the decisive goal. For Razafimaro, it\u2019s bitter-sweet. It will be the Barrea\u2019s greatest moment in African football, but he will not be able to help his teammates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shortly after Madagascar booked their ticket to Saturday\u2019s showpiece event Morocco met the Teranga Lions in the second semi-final. Joseph Layousse Samb\u2019s header from Libasse Gu\u00e8ye\u2019s corner gave S\u00e9n\u00e9gal the lead after 16 minutes. Sabir Bougrine responded with a fierce right-footed shot from outside of the area after 23 minutes. It gave the Teranga Lions\u2019 keeper Marc Diouf no chance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Further chances were created \u2013 Layousse for S\u00e9n\u00e9gal and Anas Bach for Morocco in the first half and Layousse again and Seyni Ndiaye for the Teranga Lions were denied by Morocco\u2019s goalkeeper El Mehdi Al Harrar in the second half, during which Youssouf Mehri and Ossama Lamlioui went close at the other end, but there was no further score, even in extra time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Atlas Lions tamed their Teranga namesakes 5-3 on penalties to book their journey to Nairobi. All five Moroccans scored their spot-kicks, Ndiaye left S\u00e9n\u00e9gal playing catch-up when his effort struck the crossbar. They weren\u2019t able to get another chance as all five Atlas Lions dispatched their penalties with aplomb to consign S\u00e9n\u00e9gal to make the trip to Kampala for the match few want to play, the bronze medal match against Group D winners, Kwesi Appiah\u2019s Sudan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

[1]<\/a> The actual question, which any English-speaking journalist who was there at Ahmad Ahmad\u2019s press conference would know was that African competition had a history of surprises, so which team did he think would pull of a surprise and why? Thanks to an awful translation, he was asked if he thought there would be a surprise in the final. Of course, he didn\u2019t. Shame that was nowhere near my actual question, and shame I was accused of asking a stupid question when and had to defend myself even to people who had no excuse not to know better \u2013 I still haven\u2019t forgiven them! If the actual question had been translated accurately, I would have looked a prophetic star later as Madagascar unexpectedly reached the quarter-finals!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This time I made sure that Rakotondrabe had no doubts at all what I was asking him, but more of that later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Satish Sekar \u00a9 Satish Sekar (August 26th 2025) Upset Guaranteed Twice African Nations Championship winners, Morocco, will have the opportunity to win an historic third [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2497,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16],"tags":[166,1501,1440,1473,1429,1390,1324,1490,338,1489,1478,1492,81,1443,1403,1434,1503,1418,1499,327,1500,337,423,1399,1493,1329,1401,1315,1502,1439],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4484"}],"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=4484"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4485,"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4484\/revisions\/4485"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}