Category Football

AFCON EXPOSED: The underwhelming tournament that is the pride and joy of African football

Theodore Leave a comment

As Africa’s top football spectacle has begun, international attention has turned to Ivory Coast for the Africa Cup of Nations, also known as the AFCON, but mostly to ridicule the tournament.

What used to be an exciting tournament which was a source of patriotic joy for most African nations and a tool for unity for previously segregated nations like South Africa, is now an underwhelming tournament that is riddled by refereeing mistakes, horror performances from some of the biggest African stars, and basically just a waste of time.

In their first games, footballing giants like Nigeria, Cameroon, Algeria, and Egypt played for a draw while Ghana and Tunisia lost their opening games to Cape Verde and Namibia respectively. To put this into context, Namibia had never won an AFCON finals match up until that 1-0 humbling of Tunisia. Egypt almost gave Mozambique their first win ever too, had it not been for Mo Salah’s penalty to even things out.

All these were shocking results for African football fans considering that the above-mentioned are some of the biggest and most successful African nations Football-wise.

Nonetheless, undeniable facts suggests that these are also the African nations with many professional players signed to big European clubs. Their poor performances and the reluctancy of players to join their national teams mid-january could be tied to the fact that these nations have players who don’t want to risk it all for their countries due to the fear of losing their place in their clubs should they get injured.

These European-based players prioritise club-football over the AFCON because the timing of the AFCON just isn’t the best.

Take Umar Sadiq of Nigeria for example. On Friday, Umar Sadiq was ruled out of AFCON2023 due to a knee problem, as per the NFF announcement. The following Monday he was training alone with Spanish club Real Socieadad supposedly because they have the better facilities to treat his injury, then suddenly on Tuesday he was miraculously healed and named in Real Sociedad’s squad to face Osasuna in a Wednesday night Copa del Rey clash. Sadiq came on in the second half and balled out for Real Sociedad. This right here goes to show the unseriousness surrounding the AFCON.

The only people giving it their all on the pitch are the yet-to-be discovered players from smaller and lower-ranked nations because they only have the AFCON to showcase their talent to the world.

Cote D’Ivoire, the host nation, have just finished third in their group and are in contention of going out. The only way they could go through is if they qualify as the third best. Those are some pretty low standards for a team that not only has the homeground advantage, but also has a mixture of megastars and youngsters with high ceilings like Fofana, Franck Kessie, Nicolas Pepe, and Ibrahima Sangare all in their squad.

2019 AFCON champions Algeria are also out following a repetition of underwhelming performances under manager Djamel Belmadi. Algeria finished last with 2 points in a group that consisted of Mauritania, Burkina Faso, and Angola.

Egypt on the other hand, whom are the most successful African nation, qualified second for the knockout stages without a win from three games. Three 2-2 draws against Mozambique, Ghana, and Cape Verde meant that their three points would be more than enough to finish ahead of Mozambique and the lacklustre yet star-studded Ghana side, with Cape Verde finishing first on 7 points.

The timing of the AFCON and the conservative attitude of African stars towards the tournament is depriving us of much expected entertainment and levels of performance.

Hopefully we’ll see a change in the next tournament with regards to the whole planning and perhaps the rescheduling of when AFCON could be held.

A knockout stage without the biggest names in Africa will prove to be catastrophic in my opinion. I mean, who will want to watch the AFCON (except for the fans of countries through to the next round) considering the fact that most viewers in and outside of Africa will want to see most of the biggest African superstars battling it out for the biggest footballing title in all of Africa.

PL MONTHLY ROUNDUP: So I wasn’t entirely wrong about Spurs possibly flopping?

Theodore Leave a comment

Tottenham Hotspurs has surprisingly been on hot form this season with the appointment of Australian manager Ange Postecoglou mostly to applaud.

Despite losing English marksman Harry Kane before the start of the season, Postecoglou has been able to transform the Spurs team with players like Hueng-Min Son, Yves Bissouma, and Cristian Romero seeing a resurgence of form having endured a frustrating 2022-23 season on the domestic front.

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PL MONTHLY ROUNDUP: Debutants hit the ground running as the 23/24 season starts

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The 2023/24 English Premier League season is well underway and while some debutants hit the ground running for their new clubs, some had first appearances to forget donning the colors of their new football teams. In this blog article, we will be looking at how some teams have faired thus far with only a month back of playing club football.

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