The 2023 Africa Cup of Nations is now in its knock-out phase and I didn't watch a single group game in its entirety. I wanted to and I planned to, but such is life.
Fortunately, it's never been easier to watch highlights, officially and legally, than it is right now. I've seen every goal of the tournament and if I'd had the time I could have done the same for the Asian Cup.
2010 was a different story. I've enjoyed loads of AFCON games over the years but 2010 was the tournament I was able to watch essentially in full.
It certainly had its moments…
Mali's AFCON miracle in Angola
11th November 1975. In the midst of a distinctly international Civil War, Angola declares independence from Portugal. Since the end of the War of Independence and the subsequent breakdown of the agreed coalition government, Agostinho Neto and the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola – the MPLA – have taken control of most of the country and its key administrative centres.
Cuba and the Soviet Union have intervened in support of the MPLA, South Africa and others in opposition. The smell of gunpowder hangs thick in the air, the aftermath of the bloody Battle of Quifangondo and the further escalation of violence.
There is more to come but Luanda and an independent, one-party Angola are under MPLA rule. Neto is its first President. Due to ongoing ill health, he will die in office less than four years later.
10th January 2010. On the outskirts of Luanda, the newly built Estádio 11 de Novembro hosts the opening match of the Africa Cup of Nations. It will be the venue for the final, too, but for now the attention is on Angola’s Group A curtain-raiser against Mali, played under the cloud of the tournament’s tragic prelude.
By the time the night is through, AFCON will have a new classic.
Expectations among the Angolan supporters were relatively modest but not without a degree of optimism. Home advantage can do funny things to football fans. Their journeyman Portuguese coach, Manuel José, named in his squad eleven representatives of Angola’s top division. Seven of those played in Luanda for Petro Atlético. One defender, Kali, didn’t have a club at all.
Mali couldn’t have been more different. Only two of their squad played their club football domestically, both with Stade Malien. Almost all of their team-mates played outside Africa. Their legendary Nigerian coach, Stephen Keshi, had at his disposal Barcelona’s Seydou Keita, Real Madrid player Mahamadou Diarra and Mohamed Sissoko of Juventus.
The oldest player in the squad was Frédéric Kanouté, by now 32 and part of the furniture at Sevilla. Kanouté was born and raised in France and played for his birth nation at Under-21 level. In Luanda, he wrote himself into Malian football lore along with another French-born striker, Mustapha Yatabaré, and Mali-born Keita.
Mali started the opening match on the back foot. They didn’t lack ambition, exactly, but they did have the look of a team who'd come up against a determined host nation. Angola moved forward at pace, seeking to play through Manucho, Flávio and Gilberto in the channels.
Two goals in six minutes for Flávio ignited the spectacle just before half time. The Luanda-born forward played for Petro before and after 2010 but at the time of the tournament was plying his trade with Al-Shabab in Saudi Arabia. Having made his debut a decade earlier, he earned his 59th cap against Mali and went on to win nearly 30 more.
He smashed the deadlock wide open with a fabulous improvised header from close range and a rather more routine one three minutes before half time. His two goals combined were scored from about ten yards out but they dragged the Angolan nation to delirium.
If they thought they were home and hosed at 2-0, they must have been as sure as can be when they scored twice more, again barely five minutes apart, to go 4-0 up with just quarter of an hour remaining.
Mali generated a handful of presentable chances but Angola’s superiority continued in the second half and culminated in the award of first one penalty, then another.
Gilberto knocked the ball past Mamadou Bagayoko right on the edge of the box and was cleaned out by the Nice forward as he swung a leg in an attempt to clear the ball. 27-year-old Gilberto was an experienced international and played his club football in Egypt. He played youth football at Petro before heading for Cairo, Belgium and Cyprus and concluding his career back in Luanda.
His free kick had set up Flávio’s first goal and now he had the chance to add Angola’s third. With a long run-up and a mighty swipe of his left foot, he near enough took the net off its moorings.
José urged calm on the sidelines but bedlam was imminent. Gilberto strode into the box from the left and was clumsily tripped by Keita, a first-half substitute for Mali. Penalty duties were assumed on this occasion by Real Valladolid striker Manucho, familiar to supporters in England thanks to an unsuccessful transfer from Petro to Manchester United and a loan spell at Hull City.
Manucho stepped up and side-footed the ball low past Mali goalkeeper Mahamadou Sidibé to extend Angola’s lead to four. As football dreamlands go, a 4-0 lead at the end of the opening game at a home tournament must take some beating. That it ended in ignominy is testament to the determination of the Mali players and the restorative power of the all-important first goal back.
It was a comeback for the ages and it started with eleven minutes remaining. Keita made amends for giving away the second penalty by making it 4-1, smuggling a loose ball over the line from a yard out.
Midfielder Keita started out at Marseille before moving to Lorient and Lens, then Sevilla. By the time he arrived in Luanda he was a La Liga winner and European champion with Barcelona. There were many more titles to follow but in the here and now of AFCON, his team looked beaten.
Mali’s turnaround was all the more miraculous for a flurry of late Angola chances and the fact that they didn’t score their second goal until the 88th minute. Former African Footballer of the Year Kanouté, struggling for an impact on the night, finally made his mark. His towering, imperious header was unstoppable.
4-2. The last minute came and went. Then another, and another, and another. Deep into stoppage time, Keita made the impossible look possible with a crisp left-footed volley after stealing in at the back post with Mali pushing desperately for the most unlikely lifeline. Keshi’s team had pulled it back to 4-3 and he could scarcely believe it.
Enter Yatabaré. Born in Northern France but now playing at Clermont, Yatabaré was among the younger players in the Mali squad. In the fourth minute of stoppage time he slid in to poke in the rebound after a save by Angola goalkeeper Carlos. Keshi looked stunned, José bereft.
“This draw tasted like a defeat to me, this is one of the most bitter pills I've ever had to swallow in all the matches of my long career,” lamented the Portuguese coach. “We were supposed to win this game but we gave up at the end.”
This was Mali’s moment but the Angola coach was right to point a finger inwards. The host nation had collapsed spectacularly, squandering a position of unimpeachable strength and ending the evening embarrassed.
Football being football, the ultimate truth is that this unbelievable, memorable match – a match that mattered so much and attracted huge global attention – turned out to be of little consequence.
Egypt won the competition with both Angola and Mali long gone by the time they beat Ghana to claim their seventh continental title. The 4-4 was Mali’s high point. They defeated Malawi in their third match but went out. Angola progressed as group winners despite their gut-wrenching start but lost to Ghana in the next round. Both José and Keshi left their jobs upon elimination.
Angola missed three AFCON competitions and didn’t get out of the group again until the 2023 tournament, played in Côte d'Ivoire in 2024. Mali have been ever-present and won two consecutive third-place play-offs in 2012 and 2013, both against Ghana.
But the passage of time and cold reality don’t detract from history. Angola 4-4 Mali mattered in the moment and benefits from the sequence of goals looking more and more extraordinary with every passing year.
4-0 to 4-4 is magical in any circumstances. 4-0 to 4-4 in quarter of an hour against the home team in the opening fixture of a major tournament simply doesn’t happen. This time, it did.
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“I fully understand that nothing is ideal, not least myself. I also know that many times we have to accept a logic of compromise but if I were to accept a decision that is this difficult and this wrong, turning my head from it, I would go against principles and general values in which I deeply believe.”
Zvonimir Boban quits his senior role at UEFA because of his opposition to proposed changes to the maximum term length of executive committee members that would enable Aleksander Ceferin to extend his term as president.
Salty beef extracts
Scottish strugglers turning to English clubs for investment looks desperate (The Guardian)
Maignan and Milan show statements and protocols will not end racism (The Guardian)
Clubs blaming officials for defeats is childish and dangerous (The Guardian)
In football’s crisis of trust the Premier League as referee is hard to stomach (The Guardian)
Man Utd should rip up Mason Greenwood’s contract – not try to make a profit (i)
A Story of Footballs in 30 Episodes, Part One (Unexpected Delirium)
Dessert
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Would that stop me trying? What do you think?
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