African Cup of Nations 2012

Tiote has a point. Looking at the players he has, anyone can assume they won't have much problems, but we all know that African players seem to play poorer football than what they usually show at their clubs. This tournament has always been unpredictable (Egypt won two trophies recently, yet they haven't qualified for the World Cup in ages), so the teams granted with the best odds of winning should be very careful in motivating their players.

Yes, I noticed the inconsistency in the results in African Cup of Nations. Is it due to the nature of pitches there which is generally under prepared? Or is it just the fact that players do not gel as a team? Cheers! Ram

I don't think the quality of the pitch has anything to do with it. This year the grass looks decent. I think they come to the African Cup of Nations too relaxed. They don't seem to be as motivated and as serious than they are at the club teams.

The levelling amongst the quality of the performance in African teams can lead to a more interesting tournament, but only if the smaller teams improved their performance and caught up with the stronger nations. If, in change, this levelling occurred because the better teams dropped to the level of the smaller nations in African football, the tournament will be affected in quality. Maybe the Egyptian team was affected by the social and political turmoil, but that seems to not have been the case for Libya, or Sudan. Nigeria also had some problems, since the national team was banned from all competitions by their own president. Only after FIFA stepped in, threatening with even more serious measures, did the president lift the ban and allowed his own national team to compete in the qualifying stage. This instability can lead to nothing positive...

Some minnows of African football are fast developing while others remain as "also participated"! Burkina Faso belong to the latter group. The team's performance against Angola was awful. Sudan belong to the former group; they gave the Ivoriens a run for their money. I'm a Nigerian and I'm glad that my country didn't qualify for this tournament. I stongly feel that corruption, lack of patriotism and general lack of focus and lack of desire to achieve success are some of the reasons Nigeria national has been under-performing.

I'm keeping my eye on Ghana. They did play the final against Egypt at the last tournament, in Angola 2010, and were very difficult to defeat. They were very well organized, and they still have lots of good players at important European clubs (Essien, Mensah, Muntari, Andre Ayew).

Nigeria, Cameroon and Egypt did not qualify. Neither did South Africa, but they haven't had a decent team in ages... Here is how a team could have qualified for this tournament (16 teams): - 2 host nations: Equatorial Guinea and Gabon There were 11 qualification groups: 10 groups of 4 teams (Mauritania withdrew, so one of these groups only had 3 teams), and one group of 5 teams. - the first place in each of the 11 groups qualified for the final tournament. - the second place in the 5-team group qualified. - among the teams placed on the second place in the 4-team groups, only 2 qualified, the ones with the highest number of points. Egypt finished last in its group. Nigeria and Cameroon finished second in their respective groups, but they both had 11 points, while Libya had 12 p. and Sudan 13 p. in their respective groups.