The first round of the Africa Cup of Nations is over. The major controversy, apart from the dramatic incidents which affected the Togolese team, was the ranking system the Confederation of African football chose to decide which team goes through in case of the same number of points. Instead of simply going for the overall goal difference as the first criteria, the CAF chose the particular goal difference in the match between the 2 teams who ended with the same number of points.
The first round saw strong performances by Egypt, good shows by Zambia, Nigeria, Angola, average for Ivory Coast, and disappointing performances by Algeria, Ghana and notably Cameroon. However, I am always wary of teams that start off too strong in the first rounds of major competitions since they can loose quite a lot of stamina along the way.
Here are my favourites for the quarter-finals which are held on Sunday and Monday :
- Angola – Ghana : Angola (they play at home and have showed real talent)
- Ivory Coast – Algeria : Ivory Coast and I bet Drogba will score
- Egypt – Cameroon : The big game of these quarter finals. The Egyptians owe their supporters a revenge after their World Cup elimination and have been really impressive since the start of the competition. Cameroon on the other hand has been under-average but you never know with Eto’o! I think it will be really close, a tie ending with penalty shoot-outs and Cameroon winning.
- Zambia – Nigeria : I vote for Nigeria in this game due to their experience.
[...] that’s a kind of an odd way to start a post but it refers to my almost complete disaster at predicting who would win the Africa Cup of Nations quarter finals. I only got one of the 4 matches right with [...]