Amr Obaid (Cairo)
Since the implementation of the modern system with the start of the elimination rounds in the African Cup of Nations, from the round of 16, no edition has witnessed a decline in the conditions of the “best” teams among the third-place finishers in all groups, as happened in the current edition, as it is enough to talk about Côte d’Ivoire, “the host country.” », who found himself qualifying for the next round “miraculously”, to prove that the current tournament did not witness the “best threes” reaching the first stage in the knockout rounds, but rather recorded the presence of the “weakest threes” among the last three editions!
Aside from analyzing the results and performance, the general statistics are sufficient to make a comparison between the current edition and the two previous tournaments, as “Egypt 2019” was the first tournament to witness the implementation of the “best of three” qualification, which achieved a largely “decent” harvest, by reaching the second round. Guinea came in the lead with 4 points, collected from a win, a draw and a defeat in the second group, compared to 3 points for 3 teams, namely the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Benin and South Africa, while Kenya was eliminated from the competition, despite the equal number of three points, and Angola was only two points away.
The previous tournament in Cameroon in 2021 saw Cape Verde and Malawi qualify with 4 points each, at the top of the list of the best among the third, compared to 3 points each for Tunisia and Comoros, while Sierra Leone and Sudan exited with two points and one point respectively, and it is true that the same thing was repeated. In the current edition, Guinea qualified again with 4 points, along with Namibia, along with Mauritania and Côte d'Ivoire with 3 points, while Ghana and Zambia were eliminated with 2 points. However, the numerical differences reveal the decline of the current qualifiers.
Because the team that qualified in third place with 4 points had never recorded those negative scoring averages, as Guinea qualified in the 2019 tournament with a positive scoring difference of “+1” at the time, while it did so this time with a negative score of “-1”, and despite the fact that Cape Verde and Malawi were eliminated. With limited scoring rates, they maintained an equal goal difference of “0” by scoring two goals and conceding the same in the 2021 edition, and the difference appears more with Namibia, which qualified this time with a negative difference of “-3”, as it scored one goal and conceded 4!
As for those with 3 points, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Benin qualified in 2019 with an equal goal difference of “0”. In fact, the “Panthers” scored 4 goals at that time and conceded the same, and the “Squirrels” also crossed without suffering any defeat, as they tied 3 times. South Africa qualified with the same points tally and a goal difference of “-1” in a strong group, which included Morocco, the “leader,” and Côte d’Ivoire, the “runner-up.”
In the previous tournament in 2021, Tunisia passed through third place with 3 points, recording a positive scoring difference that was the largest among the third “+2”, after scoring 4 goals and conceding twice, and although the difference was “-2” with Comoros, it scored 3 Goals, as is the case with Mauritania, but the difference for the “Al-Mourabitoun” reached -1 by conceding 4 goals, which gives the “Elephants” of Côte d’Ivoire the title of the weakest ever on that list, as they qualified despite the large negative goal difference of “-3”, as He only scored two goals, and conceded 5 times!
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