By
Mohamed Zerari
The picture is taken from the telegraph.co.uk
The crowd went wild when Boubacar Barry scored
on the ninth attempt on February 8th for Ivory Coast and finally broke a long
lasting dry spell by securing the African Cup of Nations for his team for the
first time since 1992.
The conditions were extreme: very hot temperatures
accompanied by unforgiving humid weather. This is how it feels in Equatorial
Guinea, a country that did not even qualify for the African Cup of Nations but
hosted the event after Morocco cancelled due to their fear of having Ebola
spread across the nation. The two Arab teams, Tunisia and Algeria, were
disqualified earlier in the cup due to scandal and inexperience of new
athletes.
The hungry rivals- Ghana and Ivory Coast- met
in the final round with exhausted hopes. The goalless game carried on for 120
minutes. Yaya Toure, the godfather of the Ivory Coast team after the great
Didier Drogba, showed the great skill of a leader despite his obvious
exhaustion during the match. On Ghana’s side, superstar player Asamoya Gyan
played with an injury.
Defense on both sides was open but the
attackers from both teams were unable to score and the game ended in a
frustrating tie. Everyone was anticipating the penalty shootout in order to
witness some long-awaited goals. Two missed attempts from the Ivory Coast and
two successful goals from Ghana made audiences easily predict the potential
winner. When Ivory Coast’s goalkeeper finally blocked a penalty shot attempt
from Ghana, things started to turn around. Ghana’s costly miss was accompanied
by yet another; the penalty shootout suddenly became a lot more interesting.
Yaya Toure said to the BBC, “When you win with
your club, it's quite amazing. With your country, it's unbelievable.” This
marked Ivory Coast’s second African Cup victory.
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