Africa Cup of Nations Wrap Up: 1.20.08

Day one of the tournament brought us just the one game, with hosts Ghana taking on Guinea in Accra. But it was definitely a game worth watching, with what looked like a wonderful atmosphere in the stadium as Ghana beat Guinea 2-1. Just. We LiveBlogged the game if you want to relive it minute by minute, or you can see all the goals here or there’s a summary below.

Muntari’s beautiful last minute winner provided the drama, but while the game was exciting to watch there was a lot of long ball, a lot of defensive mistakes and some woeful shooting from both teams. Turns out this was due to the long grass on the pitch, with Ghana coach Claude Le Roy complaining that “In more than 20 years in Africa, it’s the worst pitch I’ve ever seen. We have a technical team which likes to play one-touch football and this pitch badly affected our game.” But he can’t be too upset because his team took three points and will sit on top of Group A tonight.

Guinea put up a brave fight but were lucky to survive until half time without conceding. Keeper Kemoko Camara appeared to be wearing concrete shoes, failing to move as Junior Agogo, Michael Essien and Sulley Muntari all hit the post. Ghana took the lead from the spot early in the first half with a perfectly struck penalty from Asamoah Gyan after Oumar Kalabane had made a clumsy slide tackle on Junior Agogo.

But Kalabane redeemed himself just a few minutes later, shocking the home crowd when he headed the ball hard against the underside of the bar, so that it hit keeper Richard Kingson and went in. Unlucky for Kingson (it could likely go down as an own goal sinc Kalabane’s shot wasn’t technically on target) but Guinea arguably deserved to be level. Main midfield man Pascal Feindouno had been pulling a few strings, though striker Ismael Bangoura had been wasteful.

Le Roy bought on Andre Ayew - son of Abedi Pele. He’ll have to go a long way before we stop referring to him in conjunction with his dad. Ayew shot tamely when gifted a golden chance to score the winner, but did look bright down Ghana’s left wing with a couple of dribbles. The Black Stars eventually got the win the home crowd demanded, but not until very very late in the game. Muntari struck his left footed shot from outside the area and you just knew it was going straight past Guinea keeper Kemoko Camara and into the top right corner. Take a look for yourself. Brilliant stuff which caused huge celebrations amongst the Ghana players, coaching staff and fans.

The quality of the pitch was a definite downer - for spectators as well as Le Roy - but the first game of the 2008 Africa Cup of Nations had plenty of action worth watching and bodes well for the rest of the tournament.

Tomorrow: The second day is when the tournament really starts swinging. There are three back to back games on offer, one of which is the pick of the group stages.

15:00 Morocco vs Namibia (Group A)
17:00 Nigeria vs Cote d’Ivoire (Group B)
19:30 Benin vs Mali (Group B)

Chris will be LiveBlogging the big Nigeria vs Cote d’Ivoire game, with build-up beginning about an hour before kick off.

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