African Nations Cup

They’d already added the round of 16 stage to the tournament in 1986, having not used the group stage straight to quarter finals format since 1970 (from 1974 to 1978 they replaced the quarters and semis with a second group stage, which replaced just the quarters in 1982). I guess I mentioned Cameroon because there was quite a bit of hype about that team and people had high hopes for them to reach at least the semis, but you’re right, the best performance by an African team was Ghana in 2010 given they were only edged out on penalties and Cameroon as well as Senegal lost in extra time.

 

Thank god for that. Or Egypt?

 

"Lifted" is not enough. We need it re-applied to Norwich, Burnley & Newcastle/Brentford instead !

 

150 years of relegation each should do the trick!

 

Is our ex player Ishmaila Sarr going to play for Senegal this tournament?

 

Louza dropped by Morocco.

 

Nothing like a funereal national anthem to get you up for a quarter final

 

...off at the airport?

 

For ****'s sake, Egypt

 

Masina vs Salah. The rematch.

 

Based Mohamed

 

Some small measure of penance finally being paid for all his historical crimes against us.

 

Trezeguet scored that crucial goal against Arsenal for Villa which played a massive part in relegating us, nice to see he's gone a tiny way in repaying us with the winner here!

 

1990 was the same format as the Euros are now, so 24 teams, then a round of 16, then the quarters

 

Would rather it was Senegal crashing out, but this can only be good news and if it's a choice from one or none, I'll take 'one', thanks very much.

 

Keeping the Watford traditional of **** set pieces alive. Not only did Louza decide not get the ball into the mixer, when even the goalkeeper had come up, he played a poor ball to the player at the edge of the box who immediately lost it! Poor poor decision making by our boy there.

 

I was in China for the last 2 Asian Cups so I watched them quite religiously (the games were on at a convenient time for me, and I'm a bit of a football nerd who'd watch any old stuff!), but the standard in that is definitely lower than the AFCON. Japan had a good World Cup (helped by Colombia getting a red card early in the game, and some gamesmanship in their final group game), but less than a year later at the Asian Cup (admittedly without some of the key players who played in that World Cup) they lost pretty convincingly to Qatar who played friendlies in Ireland's World Cup qualifying group with very mediocre results. The FIFA Arab Cup was held recently as a test event in preparation for the World Cup in Qatar this year, and, despite the fact that there were almost no European based players at all (which obviously hit the North African teams a lot harder), the North Africans were much stronger than the Asian teams

 

Not saying Kalu is anywhere near as good as Sarr, but at least we (sort of) have cover in that particular role, we don't really have any other midfielder like Louza

 

Mmm, I'm 100% our boys of Equatorial Guinea, but that must be the easiest draw of this round for any team. Given the way this tournament has gone, maybe all bets are off, but it's hard to see them not progressing. Mostly just hoping to see Sarr as little as possible at this point...

 

It's true, but our attack has gone spectacularly off the boil (which, of course, translated, means Dennis has stopped scoring from nowhere). Unless Kalu is going to come in and immediately blow everyone away with how much he overperforms expectations, we could really do with the impact of Sarr back and (theoretically) running at opposition full backs.

 

Ismaila starts with a silent 'B'.

 

Saw a stat before the Norwich game that said that Dennis had one of the biggest (in fact I think the biggest) overperformance wrt his expected goals in the league (8 goals from less than 4xG), so it looks like it was a hot streak from Dennis

 

Even more reason for Sarr to become an international citizen and grab the first taxi to the airport!

 

HAH the traitorous Pape Gueye gets an early yellow having been done for pace by a breaking Guinean hero.

 

He looks absolute gash, a knock-off Kayembe.

 

Yippee Kay-embe, motherfuccker.

 

Seems pretty fuccking tall though, in fairness.

 

The commentator says 'the best move of the game so far', I say 'the best move of the tournament so far'. That's that, then, eh - another week in Sarr purgatory.

 

Seemed alright sprinting down to celebrate with the others. The witch doctors have cured him. Sign them up Gino!

 

Which, in fairness, they had! Hopes dashed.