The African Cup of Nations. It was the 15th African championship – may be strange, but only South America had more tournaments. Not the World Cup, not Europe. Anyhow, the championship was going through qualifying stage and final stage, hosted by Egypt. The host nation qualified directly to the finals, as well as reigning continental champion Cameroon. The qualifications went as ever before: nobody withdrew in the preliminary round, but in the next round Sudan, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, and Tanzania decided not to play. In the second round there were no withdrawals.
Mali was eliminated in the first round by Cote d’Ivoire 0-6 and 1-1, just to give you a taste of the early phases. There were no surprise results – Zaire, Tunisia, and Nigeria were eliminated, but they faced equally strong opponents, so nothing out of ordinary. The last 8 were divided into two groups for the finals in Egypt.
Group 1 was played in Cairo.
1.EGYPT 3 2 0 1 4- 1 4
2.IVORY COAST 3 2 0 1 4- 2 4 3.Senegal 3 2 0 1 3- 1 4 4.Mozambique 3 0 0 3 0- 7 0
Mozambique finished last, losing all games and scoring no goals – really weak.
Senegal was most unlucky – eliminated not even on goal-difference, but because they lost the match against Cote d'Ivoire. Minimal loss, but fatal – 0-1 in the last group round. Group B played in Alexandria.
1.CAMEROON 3 2 1 0 7- 5 5
2.MOROCCO 3 1 2 0 2- 1 4 3.Algeria 3 0 2 1 2- 3 2 4.Zambia 3 0 1 2 2- 4 1
Zambia finished last with 1 point from the 0-0 tie against Algeria.
Algeria did not go ahead either – two ties and a loss was rather weak performance. In the semi-finals Cameroon prevailed over Cote d'Ivoire 1-0, thanks to Roger Milla. Egypt also came with a 1-0 win over Morocco – late goal by Abouzid decided the fixture. The match for 3rd place was played in Cairo and Cote d'Ivoire took solid 3-1 lead by the 68th minute. Sahli managed to score second goal for Morocco, but after that only 5 minutes remained and there was no time for anything better than minimal loss.
Morocco finished 4th and their final place, as well as the early elimination of Algeria, perhaps spoke the best of rapidly improving African football: both World Cup finalists did not succeed. The competition was getting tougher and by no means a team qualifying to the World Cup finals was the obvious leader of the continents, as it was during the 1970s.
Cote d'Ivoire did very well, ending with bronze medals. May be Morocco was not pushing all that hard, having in mind the coming World Cup, but even if so, Cote d'Ivoire played with heart and deserved its triumph. The final, also played in Caire, was major drama: Egypt heavily supported by home crowd and craving victory at home versus Cameroon, which was going strong despite failing to reach the World Cup. The heroes of the Spain'82 were determined to repeat their continental success from 1984 and also the take revenge for missing World Cup finals. The clash of equal ambition and may be skill produced no winner – after overtime, the result was 0-0. Penalty shoot-out... And only now Egypt prevailed – or was luckier: 5-4.It was difficult and long game, as one can see on the Cameroonian faces.
Cameroon finished second, but unbeaten. No shame in losing penalty shoot-out, but the disappointment was perhaps huge – Cameroon was doing well, yet, no success this year. No consecutive African trophy, no World Cup... no fun.
Egypt took full advantage of hosting the finals and won the championship, if only on penalty shoot-out – the team made the whole country happy.
Since the champions were quite anonymous outside Africa, here is a picture with names – this is the squad which faced Morocco, but no matter. Top, left to right: Al-Khatib, Ashraf Kassem, Magdi Abdelgani, Mohamed Yasin, Thabet Al-Batal, Mostafa Abdou, Gamal Abdelhamid. Bottom, left to right: Ali Shehata, Mohamed Omar, Hamada Sedki, Taher Abouzaid Egypt won the African championship for a third time, but had to wait awfully long time for that – since 1959! At last they were on top – imagine the joy!