African Cup of Nations diary: Not so lucky lots and the battle of Congo

Nick Ames 15:54 29/01/2015
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  • Can't be separated: Mali and Guinea have been left annoyed by the lot ballot.

    BATA, EQUATORIAL GUINEA: Whether it speaks well of this competition or not, we have stumbled upon a situation that many of us had been half-joking about for the last week or so.

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    This afternoon, in a Malabo hotel, Group D rivals Guinea and Mali will be separated by the drawing of lots. Whoever’s ball gets drawn can stay in Equatorial Guinea’s capital city and try their luck in a quarter-final against Ghana – not as fearsome a prospect as that may seem – on Sunday. The other will be sufficiently near to the airport to make a swift getaway and, quite legitimately, left cursing their luck.

    The legitimacy of using this method to separate teams with identical records is open to question, and it seems reasonable to ask whether – if the intention was always to wait until a day after the final games before doing anything – a penalty shoot-out could not have been convened to split them. That would at least have given an iota of sporting merit to the conclusion and spared the victors any accusations of simply being lucky should they progress even further.

    It is not the first difficult situation with which CAF and the local organising committee have been presented. Having come under heavy pressure to move the two quarter-finals scheduled for little Ebibeyin and Mongomo, they agreed on Tuesday to the switch and consequently the bigger stadia in Bata and Malabo will host all four games. This is certainly the best solution for fans and media – and, if it does not appear to do much for the tournament’s integrity, we should remember the pressures inherent in arranging this event at the very last moment.

    While many media have been poring over the permutations in Malabo, others remain in Bata to absorb the preparations for Saturday’sgames. The first of what will be a double header here is an intriguing proposition: a derby between Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Republic of the Congo (Congo) – central-African neighbours whose capital cities are the closest together in the world and who have something else to unite them, too.

    Or someone. 

    Claude LeRoy has spent two spells in charge of DRC, and managed them at the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations in South Africa. On that occasion, they finished their group stage with three draws – as they did this year ­– but did not make it to the last eight. This time it was enough to send them through and they will have to accustom themselves to LeRoy’s presence in the opposition dugout.

    LeRoy celebrates Congo's passage through the group stages.

    This is LeRoy’s eighth AFCON and he considers this year’s achievement ­– taking an unheralded and unfancied Congo team through the group stage with more points than any other team in the tournament – as one of his best yet. 

    Saturday’s will be a fascinating battle. Congo has a population of 4.6 million and DRC, a genuine sleeping giant, officially houses 77 million, but LeRoy considers the DRC team to be one that he built and is quietly confident that he can cook up a plan to defeat them.

    As DR Congo manager, LeRoy consoles Cedric Makiadi after their exit in 2013.

    It might not be one that involves penalties, but LeRoy certainly has something up his sleeve and much of it may involve preventing DRC from working the ball wide to wingers Yannick Bolasie and Firmin Ndombe. Their training has been centred around pressing the ball in tight spaces and, for the goalkeepers, managing high balls. DRC, by contrast, played very much their own game during their session – a full-scale game of 11 vs 11, contested in one half of the pitch, watched from the side by a frustrated Youssouf Mulumbu. The West Brom player and DRC captain is likely to miss Saturday’s derby but hopes to be back for the semi-finals if LeRoy’s masterplan can be thwarted.

    Even if the Congos, who have won three AFCONs between them (the most recent was DRC’s second in 1974) are not the powerhouses of old there is something authentic-seeming about seeing them paired together. The winner will be a game away from the final and will have to face Ivory Coast or Algeria, but nobody has yet been impressive enough here to be feared inordinately.

    Bata itself is quiet, for now. The bustling Hotel Federaciones, in the grounds of the stadium, had played host to the sizeable and extremely friendly travelling Burkina Faso support until Wednesday, but their departure allowed the brief sense of tranquility that descends between rounds at a major tournament.

    That is about to be shattered: the Congo derby and Equatorial Guinea v Tunisia present a mouthwatering pair of fixtures in two days’ time and journalists will descend once more before hurrying back to Malabo to scrum for seats in the uncomfortably tight press area there. Sunday’s games, involving at least three of the competition’s biggest names, may well see an unseemly race to claim the best perch, or any perch at all – regardless of which team the lots draw out this afternoon.

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