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Sultan Al Ali (Dubai)
The group stage and round of 16 ended with shocking results in the 2023 African Cup at all levels. The tournament witnessed great fluctuations and the exit of candidates from the first row. It also entered history with different numbers that cannot be ignored, especially for the Arabs. Suffice it to say that the 3 African teams that achieved the most titles were excluded from the competition by the end. The round of 16, where Egypt, the team that won the title seven times, was eliminated from the round of 16 on penalties against Burkina Faso after a 1-1 draw. Cameroon, the second team to win the title five times in the same round, was also eliminated by Nigeria with two clean goals, while the third team to win the title, Ghana with four titles, exited very early from the group stage, and these three teams combine 48% of the total titles in the history of the tournament with 16 titles. From 33 copies.
As for the Arab teams, this edition takes us back to the 2013 edition! The Arabs have not missed the quarter-finals for 11 years and over 4 consecutive editions. All five Arab teams were eliminated from the current tournament. Starting with the teams of Tunisia and Algeria, the two teams came out bottom of their groups! While the teams of Egypt, Mauritania and Morocco were eliminated from the round of 16. Morocco's exit represents the biggest shock given the components of the team that dazzled everyone in the World Cup.
One of the strange cases that occurs for the first time in the history of the tournament is that the eight teams that qualified for the quarter-finals in the 2023 African Cup are completely different from those that qualified for the quarter-finals in the last edition in 2021, as the teams of Senegal, Egypt, Morocco, Burkina Faso, Tunisia, and Cameroon attended. , Equatorial Guinea, and Gambia in the 2021 quarter-finals. While in this edition we see the teams of Nigeria, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, South Africa, Ivory Coast, Cape Verde, Angola, and Guinea.
#not…48 #African #championships #service