Cameroon, Ghana and Tunisia fired their coaches after unsatisfactory Africa Cup of Nations results this year, and the bold moves paid off this week with qualification for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.

Hastily appointed Cameroon boss Rigobert Song saw Karl Toko Ekambi score in the 124th minute on Tuesday to snatch a 2-1 win over Algeria in Blida and victory on away goals.

Ghana coach Otto Addo endured many anxious minutes before a 1-1 draw against Nigeria in Abuja took the Black Stars through, also on away goals.

It was equally uncomfortable for Tunisia boss Jalel Kadri, whose side were held 0-0 at home by Mali but squeezed through thanks to a solitary-goal first-leg win last week.

With the World Cup play-offs coming just over a month after Senegal won the Cup of Nations in Cameroon, none of the new coaches were able to organise warm-up matches.

But they are now instant heroes in their nations as Cameroon look forward to an eighth appearance at the World Cup, Tunisia a sixth and Ghana a fourth.

Senegal and Morocco were the other qualifiers, in contrasting ways. Senegal edged Egypt on penalties while four-goal Morocco outclassed the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Soon after guiding Cameroon to a creditable third place as Cup of Nations hosts, Portuguese Toni Conceicao was sacked following the intervention of President Paul Biya.

Former Liverpool defender Song, the most capped Cameroonian with 137 national team appearances, was called up having never coached a senior team.

Losing at home to Algeria was a huge blow as the return match was in Blida, whose stadium is called the “slaughterhouse” given the frequency with which the Desert Foxes win handsomely there.

‘Learnt our lessons’

But Song convinced a team composed of professionals based across Europe that they could achieve the seemingly impossible.

“We learnt our lessons from the first match,” Song said. “Deploying two forwards rather than one was important.

“While tactics played a role in our second leg triumph, it was the mental attitude of the team that was most important.”

Former Borussia Dortmund assistant manager Addo combined with ex-Newcastle and Brighton boss Chris Hughton to give Ghana an unexpected triumph, especially after a 0-0 first-leg stalemate at home.

He succeeded despite the absence of captain Andre Ayew, who was suspended from both matches after being sent off in a stunning Cup of Nations defeat by minnows the Comoros.

Losing to debutants the Comoros plunged Ghana into crisis as they were eliminated after the first round and Serb coach Milovan Rajevac was sacked.

Addo restored self belief in a team containing a Premier League trio of Daniel Amartey from Leicester City, Thomas Partey of Arsenal and Jordan Ayew from Crystal Palace.

The 46-year-old was gracious in his moment of celebration, thanking his predecessors for the roles they played.

“There was a lot of work done before I took over. Thank you to former coaches Milovan Rajevac and CK Akonnor for their work. We are all in this together,” he said.

Kadri did have inside knowledge of Tunisia having assisted Mondher Kebaier, who was dumped after a Cup of Nations quarter-finals loss to Burkina Faso.

He must now plot a course that can take the Carthage Eagles beyond the first round at a World Cup for the first time.

Source: AFP

Cameroon, Senegal, Ghana, Morocco and Tunisia have booked their places in the finals on a frantic night of play-off action.

Karl Toko Ekambi scored in the fourth minute of added time at the end of extra time to give Cameroon a dramatic 2-1 win over Algeria in Blida and qualification on away goals.

Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting put eight-time qualifiers Cameroon ahead in the 22nd minute and they retained the lead until the 118th minute when Ahmed Touba equalised in the second leg of a play-off.

But with Algeria leading 2-1 overall having won the first leg 1-0 last Friday, and seemingly set for Qatar, Toko Ekambi struck.

Liverpool star Sadio Mane converted a shoot-out penalty on Tuesday to take African champions Senegal to the 2022 World Cup in Qatar at the expense of Egypt.

Senegal won the second leg of the African play-off 1-0 in Diamniadio thanks to a fourth-minute goal from Boulaye Dia and the teams finished level at 1-1 on aggregate after extra time.

As was the case in the Africa Cup of Nations final last month, Mane was entrusted with taking the crucial fifth Senegal kick and once again he made no mistake to give his side a 3-1 shoot-out victory.

Among the three Egyptians who failed to score in the shoot-out was Sane’s Liverpool teammate Mohamed Salah, who uncharacteristically blazed his kick over the crossbar.

Only four of the nine penalty takers were successful with captain Kalidou Koulibaly and Saliou Ciss missing for Senegal and Salah, ‘Zizo’ and Mostafa Mohamed for Egypt.

As Senegal celebrated a second straight qualification for the World Cup, Egypt were left to lament another dramatic loss to Senegal this year.

There were no goals in the Cup of Nations final that went to extra time in Yaounde last month, leading to a shoot-out which Senegal won 4-2 with Mane converting the fifth penalty for his side.

“It was important to get off to a good start, something we had not done in Cairo,” said Senegal coach Aliou Cisse.

“This team is better equipped (than the one which qualified for the 2018 finals). We (should have been) able to qualify in regular time given the chances we missed.”

Egypt coach Carlos Queiroz said: “There is not much to say – just nice words for the players for the game they played. Congratulations to Senegal.” 

The drama in Diamniadio came soon after Arsenal midfielder Thomas Partey scored the goal that took Ghana to the World Cup as they forced a 1-1 draw in Nigeria to win the play-off on away goals.

Partey struck after 10 minutes in Abuja and although another Premier League star, William Troost-Ekong, levelled from a 22nd-minute penalty, Nigeria failed to score again. The first leg ended goalless.

Public servants in the Nigerian capital were given a half-day and free transport was arranged from the suburbs to ensure a capacity 60,000 crowd cheered on the Super Eagles.

Goalkeeping howler

But the home team fell behind early on when Partey’s shot from outside the box slipped between the hands of goalkeeper Francis Uzoho and into the net.

Troost-Ekong was the calmest person in the cauldron of noise midway through the opening half as he sent Ghana goalkeeper Jojo Wollacott the wrong way from the penalty spot to equalise.

Napoli forward Victor Osimhen had the ball in the net for Nigeria soon after, but it was ruled offside after a VAR check.

Nigeria applied constant second-half pressure, but could not break down a Ghana defence marshalled by Leicester City centre-back Daniel Amartey.

Ghana started the two-leg tie as underdogs after a dismal showing at the Cup of Nations in January, with a loss to minnows the Comoros condemning them to a humiliating first-round exit.

Azzedine Ounahi scored twice as Morocco trounced the Democratic Republic of Congo 4-1 in Casablanca to reach the finals for a sixth time.

Tarik Tissoudali and Paris Saint-Germain full-back Achraf Hakimi also netted for the Atlas Lions, who qualified 5-2 on aggregate after the first leg finished 1-1 in Kinshasa.

The outclassed Congolese Leopards trailed by four goals before Ben Malango snatched a consolation goal 13 minutes from time.

Tunisia secured their place in Qatar despite being held 0-0 at home by Mali in the second leg of a play-off.

A pre-match warning by Tunisia coach Jalel Kadri to his team that the return match would be even tougher than the first leg in Bamako last Friday proved spot on.

Having built a 1-0 lead in Mali through a Moussa Sissako own-goal, Tunisia were unable to build on their aggregate advantage and only scraped through.

Reported by AFP with additional editing from Camcordnews

Prolific Liverpool scorer Mohamed Salah was the architect of the only goal as Egypt edged Senegal 1-0 in Cairo on Friday in a high-profile World Cup play-off first leg.

Salah turned inside the box and slammed the ball against the crossbar with the rebound hitting Senegal defender Saliou Ciss and rolling into the net for an own-goal.

The eagerly awaited clash was a repeat of the Africa Cup of Nations final last month, which Senegal won 4-2 on penalties in Cameroon after 120 goalless minutes.

It was one of three first legs decided by a solitary goal with Algeria winning 1-0 against Cameroon in Douala and Tunisia achieving a similar result against Mali in Bamako.

Ghana and Nigeria played a 0-0 draw in Kumasi and Morocco came from behind to hold the Democratic Republic of Congo 1-1 in Kinshasa.

The five second legs are scheduled for Tuesday and the aggregate winners will represent Africa at the World Cup in Qatar from November 21.

Nigeria had to settle for a 0-0 draw in Ghana after VAR overruled a decision to award the visitors a penalty.

A review of the decision in the closing stages of the west African showdown found that Ghana midfielder Iddrisu Baba was fouled before he handled.

Ghana came closest to breaking the deadlock with Nigerian goalkeeper Francis Uzoho pulling off a superb save to deny Fatahu Ishaku in the first half.

Veteran Lyon forward Islam Slimani scored five minutes before half-time to give Algeria victory over Cameroon.

Slimani, 33, soared in a crowded goalmouth to head a Youcef Belaili free-kick powerfully past goalkeeper Andre Onana into the roof of the net.

Even 11 minutes of added time could not bring Cameroon an equaliser and they must win in Blida to avoid missing successive World Cups.

Cameroon hold the record for World Cup appearances by an African nation with seven and have not missed two in a row since first qualifying in 1982.

Success was particularly sweet for Algeria as they fared disastrously in the Atlantic port city of Douala when defending the Africa Cup of Nations title two months ago.

Humiliating exit

Algeria began the tournament boasting a 34-match unbeaten record only to draw with Sierra Leone and lose to Equatorial Guinea and the Ivory Coast to make a humiliating first-round exit.

Mali defender Moussa Sissako conceded an own-goal and was sent off within four minutes as they lost 1-0 to Tunisia.

Under pressure from Seifeddine Jaziri, Sissako pushed the ball toward his own goal on 36 minutes, unaware that goalkeeper Ibrahim Mounkoro had strayed off his line, and the ball landed in the net.

When Sissako committed a last-defender foul on Jaziri soon after he was shown a red card and although Mali created the better second-half chances, they failed to convert any into goals.

Mali gave a first cap to France-born Everton midfielder Abdoulaye Doucoure, who had long hoped to play for his country of birth before agreeing to represent the homeland of his parents.

Tarik Tissoudali scored a brilliant equaliser as Morocco moved closer to a sixth World Cup appearance by drawing with the Democratic Republic of Congo.

A move that began with a superb slide tackle by Moroccan defender Romain Saiss ended with Tissoudali rifling the ball into the net on 76 minutes.

Yoane Wissa had given DR Congo a 12th-minute lead, sprinting down the wing, cutting inside and unleashing a shot from just outside the box that brushed Saiss and beat goalkeeper Yassine Bounou.

With away goals counting double if teams finish level on aggregate, a 0-0 draw in Casablanca would take Morocco to Qatar.

Morocco were unsettled after falling behind and Cedric Bakambu and Dieumerci Mbokani wasted chances to put the Congolese further ahead lead on a gloomy and windy evening.

The visitors squandered an early second-half chance to equalise when Ryan Mmaee blazed a penalty over the crossbar.

DR Congo were reduced to 10 men with five minutes remaining when Ngonda Muzinga was sent off after being yellow-carded twice. He will miss the return match.

Source: AFP

This year’s Africa Cup of Nations featured 15 African-born coaches, leading some to conclude that local coaches had broken through racial and ethnic barriers to a level long reserved for Europeans.

But do the success stories in a few nations mean that the coaching pathway has truly opened up for local coaches in Africa?

While impossible to say definitively, the success of Aliou Cisse, coach of Senegal’s Lions of Teranga in this year’s African Cup of Nations (AFCON), appeared to erase all doubts in the minds of thousands of Senegalese fans celebrating jubilantly across the country’s capital.

“He allowed us to get the cup we had been waiting for for years. We’ve none better than him,” said one of Cisse’s ecstatic fans.

Until recently, European coaches were preferred by African teams despite their spotty achievements on the continent. In the book “Feet of the Chameleon: The Story of African Soccer,” author Ian Hawkey confirmed what many knew to be true.

“It’s tough for an African coach or manager to get a good job in soccer and even tougher for him to keep it,” he wrote. “But it can appear very easy to get a good coaching job in African soccer if you are from Europe or South America.”

One such European coach was Claude Le Roy, nicknamed “the White Wizard,” who arrived in Cameroon and took charge of the Indomitable Lions in 1986. After a narrow defeat in that year, they trounced Nigeria 1-0 with a lone goal in

the 55th minute.

The 73-year-old Le Roy took over Togo’s team in 2016. He managed to lead them to the 2017 finals in Gabon but he was sacked after they failed to reach the 2021 AFCON finals in Cameroon.

“To say Togo’s journey in the AFCON qualifiers was underwhelming would be an understatement,” wrote Ali Ismail, sports analyst. The team would now miss on their second consecutive Africa Cup of Nations, with their last appearance coming in 2017 one year after Le Roy’s appointment.

Despite several defeats, Le Roy managed to win the Cameroonian Order of Merit, the second highest honorary decoration in 2021. He returned the honor with a signed copy of his book “Claude Le Roy, Blond Magician,” which he gifted to President Biya.

Winfried Schäfer of Germany also coached the Indomitable Lions of Cameroon from 2001 to 2004. Schafer claimed credit for getting Samuel Eto’o Fils, arguably the best African player of all time, to “train full throttle.” Herve Renard, another Frenchman, was recently recruited from Saudi Arabia at a salary of $100,000 monthly to coach Ghana’s Black Stars.

Meanwhile, African coaches were forced to settle for interim positions, often being replaced before the major competitions came around.

“We felt powerless and hurt by these choices,” Mali’s national coach Mohamed Magassouba told DW, the German news service. “To those above, we were not good enough to manage our national teams. No matter what we did, we were not supported.”

“Native coaches in general are not respected,” he told DW, “even when we have the required skills and the same qualifications as Europeans.”

Sadly, Africans recruited to play in European teams have found themselves locked into contracts that deny their right to play at home for major games.

Just before the recent African Cup games, European clubs initially refused to release their African players to their national teams for the tournament last month. The association body of European clubs, ECA, linked the decision to the pandemic.

European clubs and nations use their powerful economic position to dictate the contract terms for soccer players from African nations.

The loss of Africa’s most talented soccer players to European leagues has been viewed as ongoing post-colonial exploitation. Ydnekatchew Tessema, former president of the Confederation of African Football, a vociferous critic of the export of African players, once argued: “When the rich countries take away from us our best elements, we should not expect any chivalrous behavior on their part to help African soccer.”

Analysis of the 2018 World Cup in Russia revealed a high presence of African (Black and Arabic) players in top European teams. Of the four semi-finalist teams, only Croatia was 100% white, while France (63% white), Belgium (31% white) and England (37% white) had a high number of children of immigrants.

This increasing prominence of African players has both positive and negative consequences. In the words of Inter Milan star, born to Congolese parents, Romelu Lukaku: “When things were going well…they were calling me Romelu Lukaku, the Belgian striker. When things weren’t going well, they were calling me Romelu Lukaku, the Belgian striker of Congolese descent.”

After their historic victory in last month’s competition, the Senegalese national team was rewarded with a cash prize of $87,100 and a plot of land in the capital Dakar. The team was crowned champions of Africa for the first time in their history.

Source: Amsterdam News

Kelechi Iheanacho overshadowed fellow Premier League stars Mohamed Salah and Riyad Mahrez on Tuesday as Nigeria made a winning start to their Africa Cup of Nations campaign and title-holders Algeria were held.

The Leicester City forward scored the only goal on 30 minutes as Nigeria overcame lacklustre Egypt 1-0 in a clash of Group D big guns in the northwestern city of Garoua.

His match winner and overall performance earned Iheanacho the man-of-the-match award on a day when prolific Liverpool scorer Salah and Manchester City winger Mahrez failed to sparkle.

Captain Salah cut an isolated, frustrated, figure at the Stade Roumde Adjia and when he did get a scoring chance in the second half, his prod was saved by the boot of goalkeeper Maduka Okoye.

It was an otherwise uneventful evening for the Nigeria shot-stopper, who must have anticipated being called into action more often against the record seven-time African champions.

“We had three things in mind – winning, retaining possession and cutting off the supply to Salah,” said Nigeria caretaker coach Augustine Eguavoen.

“Every game will be treated like a final because each team in Cameroon must be respected regardless of the name of the country.

“There are no minor football nations anymore in Africa so if you do not plan and make the effort, you can be shocked.”

This was the eighth meeting of the Super Eagles and the Pharaohs in the flagship African tournament and three-time champions Nigeria have won four and drawn two.

Nigeria succeeded after a troubled build-up in which German coach Gernot Rohr was fired following an unimpressive World Cup qualifying run and former national star Eguavoen took temporary charge.

Eguavoen’s squad was without forwards Victor Osimhen, Emmanuel Dennis and Odion Ighalo for a variety of reasons, but his team went on the offensive from the kick-off and did him proud.

Speedy winger Moses Simon played a major role when the Super Eagles took the lead at the 30,000-capacity stadium.

Guinea-Bissau still winless

His cross was only partially cleared by Ahmed Hegazy and Nigerian Joseph Aribo nodded the ball into the path of Iheanacho, who hammered a half-volley past goalkeeper Mohamed Elshenawy.

After the later Group D match Guinea-Bissau are still without a win in three Cup of Nations appearances as Judilson ‘Pele’ Gomes missed a penalty and the woodwork saved Sudan twice in a 0-0 draw.

Algeria were hot favourites to win the opening Group E match against Sierra Leone, a lowly ranked team making a first Cup of Nations appearance since 1996.

But captain Mahrez could not inspire his team in the Atlantic port city of Douala and several excellent saves by Sierra Leone goalkeeper Mohamed Kamara saw him voted man of the match.   

His finest moment came during the second half when Yacine Brahimi broke through, but the goalkeeper held his shot at the second attempt.

Ivory Coast, considered the biggest threat to Algeria in the section, face Equatorial Guinea on Wednesday in a match offering both teams a chance to top the table.

The draw did allow Algeria to extend their remarkable unbeaten run in competitive action to 35 games, just two shy of Italy’s record of 37 without defeat.

The heat and humidity of a mid-afternoon kick-off at the Japoma Stadium failed to help, but Sierra Leone deserve enormous credit for their display.

“We were up against well organised opponents and the weather conditions were difficult. It was very, very hot and extremely humid,” said Algeria coach Djamel Belmadi.

“We are close to Italy’s unbeaten record, which is good. We are unbeaten in three years, but we don’t think about that ahead of every game. We just wanted to win today.”

English-born Sierra Leone coach John Keister said: “We are here to do our thing. Whether we are a surprise in this tournament remains to be seen. I don’t want to get carried away after one game.”

Source: AFP