Right, 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 Nigeria winning with difficulty over Zambia in the penalty shoot-out. In all other 3 I got it wrong. Egypyt got a well deserved victory over Cameroon with the latter team making unthinkable blunders at this level. Algeria also won a convincing victory against Ivory Coast where it now doesn’t look certain coach Vahid Halilhodzic will still be coaching the Elephants for the World Cup. Finally, Ghana beat host country Angola. This all proves football is one of the collective sports where surprises can be many. I would argue that the nature of the game makes predictions more hazardous than say in sports like rugby or basketball.
The 2 semi-finals played today will see Egypt play Algeria in a much anticipated confrontation after the World Cup qualifying matches between the 2 teams, and Nigeria facing Ghana. This time I won’t make any predictions 
.
Update : Egypt beat Algeria 4 – 0 with the Algerians finishing with only 8 players! In the other semi-final, Ghana beat Nigeria 1 – 0.
Maracanazos are not ashamed of getting it wrong!
well i will admit that when i saw that gana was going to the final, i went to maracanazo.com to see your pronostics..and i must say that i was agreably surprised to see that you assumed your errors in your pronostics! so i must say that you have done well finally, it ias always very good to admit and finally it is true, life is full of surprises otherwise it would be very boring. i remember a game almost two years ago, coupe d´europe, where turkey ( don´t remember agains who they were playing) played until the end and everybody had already considered that they were finished but they fought so incredibly well that they made two unexpected goals at thelast minutes of the games, so who will win the 2010 world cup? i can already say that i beleive that brazil will not win 2010 ( allthough THEY WILL WIN 2014!
shall it be an african team which would be a fantastic surprise and innovation on the world cup history!?or surprisengly argentina? france has really almost no chance to win, i would bet on an unexpected team this year and not on the tradional winning teams of always.
[...] : Got it wrong again yesterday with Inter – [...]
Although Argentina is often considered as an excellent team, they rarely come up to their fans’ expectations. Knowing that Maradona was a much better player than he is a trainer and that noone would bet a dime on his strategy, our hopes are now high.