Wednesday, February 08, 2012

Zambia in the final

It is hard not to have sympathy for Zambia's football team: in the 80s and early 90s they were an important part of the African football awakening that was to take the world by storm right until 1993, when the entire team was killed in an air disaster when heading to a World Qualifier. While in 1994 they made it to the African Nations Cup final, they still never fully recovered from the tragedy.
Now, Zambia is in the African Nations Cup final yet again after defeating Ghana 1-0 in the semifinal. While I was unapologetic in supporting the Black Stars, one cannot help having the sympathy for the Zambians who fought well and with a bit of always-necessary luck managed to defeat the favorites of Ghana.
Zambia will be facing Cote d'Ivoire in the final on Sunday.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Erik, is it just me or does Ghana start to become "Spain of Africa" - I mean, untill a few years ago, Spain was the eternal favorites when entering the big tournaments, and they always fails to win.

Ghana has a lot of talented players, doing quite well in the youth tournaments, but in my memory, they have not been able to win the African Cup of Nations for quite some years - in spite of the obvious talent and tactical skills.

Spain was not a bad team in the old days - lots of great players - but it was so dissapointing to cheer for them.

I think Drogba will get his title this time.
//jim

El Erik said...

Interesting point Jim, but I do not think that the comparison is entirely fair: Ghana does have 3 African championships and youth world cups. As for now, they are surely, with Cameroon, the African country that has come closest to a WOrld Cup semifinal.
Of the last three African Cups they probably disappointed at home in 2008, but in 2010, they were a surprise semifinalists since they went with an untried team. This time, I agree that it is disappointing, but I think the favourites have been Ivory Coast all along (I actually think that if they don't win it now, they are more like Spain, since they have never ever won it before, and their talent pool is also good).
More generally, I think that the good thing about the African Cup over the last 20 years has been the steady improvement of the teams, more entering every time (newcomers Guinea and Gabon, and some like Zambia and Sudan, have played great, showing the breadth of African football), and this makes the competition much harder, perhaps much harder than what we have seen in Europe before....
Well, that is controversial enough to deserve another post....
Cheers Jim!

Anonymous said...

Hi E,

It is actually four championships, but the last one was in 1982 - right about the time you scored you first "lilleput" goal!

And that is a long time ago my fiend :-)

//jim

El Erik said...

4? Ok, still makes the difference with Spain greater.
Until 2008 Spain had one European Championship, in 1964, when the format was very different.
World Cup wise, until 2010, they had pretty much as good a statistic in World Cups as Ghana.
I do not believe Ghana is the "Spain of Africa"
If I had to nominate someone for that title, Ivory Coast, after today.
Zambia had good juju.

Anonymous said...

Well I agree that Ivory Coast is a stronger candidate for "Spain of Africa" than Ghana.

It funny how it is alway a pleasure to see the underdogs win, and that we at the same time would like the great players to win too.

I mean what will Messi be in the history books with "only" olympic titles in his bag? Will he greater than Maradonna without?
The same goes for Drogba and maybe Essien - they are great, but will they be the greatest without any titles?

//jim