TECHNICALLY SPEAKING
The AFCON of the century
The 2023 Africa Cup of Nations delivered drama, excitement and quality
You could pretend Ivory Coast won the Africa Cup of Nations because of the balance and flexibility of the midfield shape introduced by Emerse Fae, and it would be partially true. Jean Michael Seri, Franck Kessie and Seko Fofana excelled in both the semi-final and the final. But really it was about something far less explicable, far wilder, far more thrilling than that. Ivory Coast won the Cup of Nations because nobody would work out a way of knocking them out. They lost twice in the group stage, sacked their manager, had a man sent off in the first half of their quarterfinal, went behind in three knockout games and still somehow won the thing. So many times did their campaign seem dead, they came to be known as “zombies”.
This was, almost certainly, the best Cup of Nations of the century so far. The goals dried up in the knockout stages, but the level of drama remained high and so too did the general level of football. In part, that was down to the quality of the pitches. The surface at Ebimpe, which hosted the final, wasn’t great, but it was still better than the average ones in Cameroon three years ago, while the other five were all true and encouraged quicker, possessionbased football.
In addition, the number of African coaches probably helped too. When Fae replaced Frenchman Jean-Louis Gasset after the group stage, Ivory Coast became the 14th of the 24 sides to be led by an African. In 2021 the figure was 13 out of 24, and 11 out of 24 in 2019. Where the European journeyman instinctively defends, looking to avoid the sort of eye-catching humiliation that might prevent him picking up another job at the next Cup of Nations, the domestic coach has, at least in theory, a sense of what is good for the development of his nation’s football. It’s true that these are largely diaspora coaches returning having received their footballing education in Europe rather than African coaching schools producing a mass of top coaches.
Assessing quality is necessarily to an extent subjective, but this by and large was varied football with the majority of sides either progressive or, if they were more reactive, having a clear idea of how they wished to attack once they regained the ball. Nigeria made it to the final by dint of having the best defence but for all their back three could at times be criticised as over-conservative, the speed of Calvin Bassey was necessary to compensate for the relative lack of pace of centre-back partners William Troost-Ekong and Semi Ajayi. And they had a clear pattern of counterattack, with the ball being worked to Moses Simon on the wing and Victor Osimhen typically making a near-post run to draw defenders while Ademola Look
