Africa Cup of Nations 2019: and now semifinals
By Guillaume Mahot
Senegal-Tunisia and Algeria-Nigeria. This is a perfect balance between Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa. These are also the two semifinals of the current Africa Cup of Nations after the quarter finals that took place this week. Planned on July 14th in the evening, they promise to be disputed if we trust what happened in the previous round, where we indisputably watched some of the best confrontations in the competition.
At least one, Ivory Coast-Algeria (1-1, 3-4 on penalty kicks), which was a game filled up with all the elements an average football fan is usually yearning for: suspense, high level skills, tension, spectacle and intensity. Occurring last night, the game was won by the Algerian Fennecs who then take their revenge on the Elephants, who had kicked them out in 2015 (and at the time, Ivory Coast had won the tournament). Jonathan Kodjia (62’) answered to Sofiane Feghouli (20’) in the regular time. Punctuated by many opportunities on both sides, the opposition between these two big African nations chose its winner in the crucial penalty kicks phase, where Wilfried Bony and Geoffroy Serey Dié missed for Ivory Coast. Qualified, Algeria will have another big part to face up to in semifinals with the Nigerian Super Eagles, who do not show all their potential in this African Cup but demonstrate an incredible efficiency with strikers like Ahmed Musa and Odion Ighalo. They got rid of South Africa (2-1) last Wednesday.
The Senegalese Lions will defy the Tunisian Eagles on the second semifinal. Idrissa Gana Gueye scored the only goal to defeat Benin in quarter finals (1-0) while Mbaye Niang was leaving the pitch on injury. His absence would be a heavy loss for Aliou Cissé, who can nonetheless be happy with Salif Sané’s comeback. The defender got injured in the first game of the competition. On the Tunisian side, whose fans did not expect their squad to go that further, life is good: last night, Sassi, Msakni and Sliti gave the victory over the surprise team of Madagascar (3-0) with 18 attempts (6 only for the Barea). Jérémy Morel’s teammates leave here but can be proud of the attitude they proposed. Never before had Madagascar reached this level in an official competition. The more you have, the more you want.
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