Egypt won a very well deserved title

It is all over and the Pharaohs of Egypt won a deserved title. They were the best team, no doubt about that. They beat Eto'o's Cameroon by a clear four goals to two in their opener, followed it with a 3-0 demolition of minions and rivals, Sudan. In the third group match, they played a one all game against Zambia needing only a draw to top the group. They saw off a spirited performance from Angola, wining 2-1 in the quarter-finals. Perhaps their most difficult, and best, game was against tournament favourites Ivory Coast whom they whitewashed 4-1 in a clinical performance that saw them make the free-scoring Ivoirians taste a dose of their own medicine.

Personally, I am glad at the Egyptian victory. Some Ghanaians wanted Egypt to beat Cameroon because Cameroon had the temerity to painfully prevent us from reaching the finals of our own tournament. Others wanted Cameroon to win because they are our West African brothers and the Egyptians do not really count
		Ghanaian fans hoped to bury the Lions but it was Eto's precision pass that helped put a whole nation to tears

themselves as Africans. All these are just emotional talk. As for me, I am still glad that the Egyptians won. I would have loved them to have met Ghana in the finals but if that had happened, they may have beaten us. The fact cannot be denied that they have a better team - better than any of the other 16 teams on parade in the tournament. On purely football basis, I am glad that Egypt won. The tournament saw the best team winning, not by chance but because they played the most effective and tactically superior game. In the finals, they should have won by a larger margin than the lone goal they scored. It is the irony of the game that in a match they dominated, the winning goal came from a terrible defensive blunder by Cameroonian veteran captain Song. The goal was a bit reminiscent of the one Cameroon scored against us – it came more or less from a counter attack. After the Lions got wounded, they came back fighting ferociously, but just like Ghana in the game against them, the fight back came to nothing.

I am glad that the Egyptians won because I think it is good for African football. Of the 23 Egyptian players registered for the championships, 17 play in the local league. The coach and his assistant are all Egyptians. Compare this with the other favourites: Ivory Coast's troupe contained only a single home based player – the third goalkeeper who was in the team just to help during training. Cameroon's team also had only one home based player – the third goal keeper who was only in to make up the numbers. Ghana's team contained 3 local players only one of whom was anywhere near the first team. As for Nigeria and Senegal, they didn't call a single home based player. All these teams also had foreign coaches. Egypt came up above all these well paid foreign based players and their foreign coaches. It can only be a victory for African soccer. Egypt's domination of the club scene in Africa is no fluke. Some of the players in the other teams on parade are playing their professional game in the Egyptian League! The Egyptians may not be as black as us and they didn't have a single black man in their first line up but when it comes to football, they are as African as all of us and they play the game against the rest of us on the continent.

The only thing left for Egypt now is to prove their mettle in the World Cup. They have so far not done well – two appearances and never going beyond the first round. They have South Africa 2010 to prove they are good, even against top European and South American opposition.

Africa can't win a World Cup now
Africa is still a long way from winning a world cup. Even though we have won at the youth levels and the Olympics, this has not translated into victory at the senior level. I see two reasons for this. The game is different at the senior level and the rest of the world really takes the World Cup very seriously. It is the pinnacle of the game and African countries are still a third world at that level. African countries have been cheating more than other countries at the youth level. Because dates of birth are nothing sacrosanct in Africa, the players we present at the youth levels are already bearded married men at the heights of their playing careers. This effect is cancelled at the senior level. So Africa will not win in 2010, neither will we in Brazil in 2014. The best we can hope for in South Africa is a semi-final place or a repeat of Cameroon's and Senegal's quarter final places. I will be happy to be proved wrong. African football has made mighty strides but we are still some way off the topmost nations. The teams in the Ghana tournament played the best African football but it won't be enough to win us the World Cup.

Stars that didn't shine
Perhaps the greatest of the African stars on parade was not Kanouté or Drogba but Eto'o. He scored five goals in this tournament but he didn't really shine. Three of the goals were penalties and three goals came against some of the weakest oppositions in the tournament. In many of the matches he was anonymous. He missed his club mates from Barcelona who did most of the work that was needed for him to score.  Eto'o is not the world's best dribbler of the ball. In fact, at the level of the game which he plays, his dribbling skills are ordinary but he is very definitely a goal scorer of rank – fast, forceful and with the ability to utilize even half chances. And occasionally, he can come up with the deadly final pass like the one which went to Nkong to knock us cold in the semi-finals and put a whole nation to tears.

Eto'o is just a boy from a small town in Cameroon. It is only natural that all the fame he has acquired will get to his head. They say he has become the playmaker, manager, organiser and general godfather to the Cameroonian team. And he is only 26.

The other stars didn't perform well either. Ivory Coast was doing well without Drogba doing particularly well as an individual. The team had the greatest concentration of stars playing in the best clubs in Europe. But they failed woefully against Egypt. Nigeria disappointed too. In two and half games, they failed to score a goal and made only three goals in four matches, one of which was a penalty. They needed Ivory Coast to beat a tame Mali in order to get to the quarters. Perhaps the star-studded team with the worst performance was Senegal – one of only two African teams to have ever made it to a World Cup quarter-final. Their stars looked uninterested in the tournament and they lost to Angola playing with their local players.

The only star who performed to expectations was our own Michael Essien. He played his game as he would in his Chelsea and inspired his side to rise from a goal down to beat Nigeria. In the semi-finals, he had to fall back with the absence of ace defender John Mensah. Many ifs can be said about that game. If Mensah had played, if Essien had been in the midfield, if Asamoah Gyan was in devastating form, if inexperienced Ayew had come in as a sub rather than from start, if … The winning goal was a counter attack from Cameroon after a Ghanaian attack that saw Essien and the others coming forward to help.

Benefits to Ghana
It is not certain if the tournament was a financial boon to Ghana. The million visitors promised never came. Africans are too poor to follow their teams to other countries. The tournament was lucky to have had 35,000 spectators watching the final in which the home team was not taking part. The greatest benefit to Ghana for hosting the tournament will be the inspiration it will give to the youth to take up the game and the fine facilities that are left behind. The later will be relevant only if we do not fall back to our old habit of non maintenance of facilities once they are built. For some four weeks, Ghana was very much in the news around the world. That was very good for our image too. But I am very sure some financial institutions and businesses will now be faced with picking up the tabs after the games. They will have debts to pay for a long time.

The 26th African Cup of Nations now belongs to history. It is time to look forward to the next games. The World Cup qualifiers will soon start. Ghana is drawn in the same group as Libya, Gabon and Lesotho. We should be able to win or come second in this group to qualify for Angola and the important second round of the World Cup qualifiers. We have a young team that can only get better in two years time. We can still win the cup in Angola. Ghana has won twice away from home even if North Africa seems to be our lucky area of winning in which case we will have to wait until the games come to Libya in 2014 after Equatorial Guinea and Gabon in 2012. But if we can get to the quarter finals in the World Cup in South Africa in 2010, all the tears and heartbreak from the semi-final loss to Cameroon will be forgotten. 

Kofi Sapathy

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