A week ago, Ivory Coast was facing a 4-0 defeat by Equatorial Guinea. They are currently in the last eight of the Africa Cup of Nations, having eliminated the champions. They are a team that has repeatedly looked dead and buried since the start of the tournament – such as when they fell a goal behind with four minutes left on Monday – yet somehow Sébastien Haller’s zombie army marches into the quarter-finals against Mali or Burkina Faso. .
Senegal, the best team in the group stage, was in control until Haller’s arrival. This looked like a classic example of scoring early and ending the game. It didn’t happen that way, and the curse continues: No champion has made it to the quarter-finals since Egypt in 2010. “We deserved to go to the quarter-finals,” said Senegal’s coach Aliou Cissé. Disappointed but proud – “but it’s a football game so we can’t complain”.
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For Ivory Coast, the second-half defeat against Equatorial Guinea had produced a fatal defeat, the kind of resignation that can tarnish a country’s soul for years, but they woke up a week later to find themselves still inexplicably involved in the rivalry. (Or perhaps completely inexplicably: if Avram Grant’s Zambia had scored one more goal in any of their matches, Ivory Coast would not have emerged as the best third-placed team.)
But they realized they had lost their coach, Jean Louis-Gasset being sacked following the humiliation in Ecuador. What the 70-year-old Frenchman, who has no previous experience in African football, is doing there is another question. After the France women’s team’s bold approach to loan Hervé Renard, who led them to the Nations Cup in 2015, was rejected, Ivory Coast came under the temporary charge of former Reading midfielder Emerse Faé, who had never played before. He coached one match in his life. For a country that reportedly spent $1 billion to organize the tournament, it all looked pretty careless.
The positive thing for Ivory Coast was that there was nothing to lose; Nobody expects anything from the immortals. And perhaps age means less to zombies; The search for eternal youth probably looks futile for those who have recently left the grave, which may explain the return of 36-year-old Max Gradel to the forward line in his first start of the tournament as one of five changes from the defeat against Equatorial Guinea.
The problem is that while the undead are very good at attacking massive icy walls on the northern borders, farmhouses in rural Pennsylvania, or saloons in Crouch End, they’re not very good with crosses. It took just four minutes for Sadio Mané to fire a shot from the left wing to find Habib Diallo in the box, and he delivered a huge dent in Ivory Coast’s hopes when he turned on the turn and fired his shot into the top corner.
There was a sense that some confidence had been regained after the Ivorians took control of possession. Perhaps the situation would have been different if Mané’s lunge on Ibrahim Sangaré had resulted in a red card instead of a yellow card; but Senegal didn’t exactly appear to be barricaded in the cellar of a bar with an obsolete rifle and a dwindling supply of bullets.
But the problem with the undead is that they are quite difficult to finish off. There was always the danger of an inflamed arm bursting from the grave to grab an unsuspecting Senegalese ankle, but with Édouard Mendy calmly claiming a series of crosses, the bodies remained safely buried – at least Haller’s absence was eliminated by injury. up to. Such a problem for Ivory Coast also occurred for Jean-Philippe Krasso in the 72nd minute.
Cape Verde captain Ryan Mendes scored a penalty two minutes later in the African Cup of Nations last 16 match on Monday to beat Mauritania 1-0, ensuring the smallest country advances to the quarter-finals of the 24-team tournament.
Mendes scored the spot kick to give the islanders the victory they deserved after dominating another fast and furious encounter.
The penalty was conceded by Mauritania goalkeeper Babacar Niasse, who had to leave the game as Yassin handled Cheikh El Welly’s poor header from behind, bringing down substitute striker Gilson Benchimol in the process.
Cape Verde, which has a population of approximately 600 thousand, will face Morocco or South Africa in the last eight on Saturday. Reuters
Mendy was called upon to make two saves almost immediately but the keeper brought him down when Haller’s pass left Nicolas Pépé. This is what Ivory Coast was missing; That’s what they could do. “We had to regain our skills as warriors,” Faé said. Kessié scored from the penalty shootout, and four minutes into the quarter-finals, Senegal suddenly realized that the battle was not won: the sweaty fingers of the rising corpse had grabbed them by the calf and dragged them into conflict.
Once they got hold of them, they couldn’t shake them off. Nottingham Forest’s Moussa Niakhaté hit the post with the penalty and Kessié had to convert the decisive kick. Senegal’s title defense is over and the Ivory Coasters are not only improbably dying, but dancing in disbelieving celebration.