The draw for the Angola 2010 Africa Cup of Nations took place yesterday in Luanda, the Angola capital with Nigeria pairing Mozambique, Benin and defending championships, Egypt in Group C.
\nThe draw of the 27th edition of the championship also pitched host Angola with Mali, Algeria, and Malawi in Group A, while Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo and Burkina Faso will slug it out in Group B.
\nGroup D will feature Cameroon, Tunisia, Zambia and Gabon.
\nAngola versus Mali will be the opening of the tournament.
\nGroup A will be based in Luanda, Group B will be in Cabinda in the north of the country, Group C will play in Benguela, and Group D will be based in Lubango.
\nFormer Angolan football legend Akwa said he thought all the groups looked difficult.
\n\u201cIt’s not just Algeria and Angola that could go through, Mali have a good national team and they can give us a lot of problems,\u201d he said.
\nHowever, when asked ho far Angola can go, he said \u201cI believe we can reach the final.\u201d
\nGroup B is being touted as the group of death with the prospect of Ghana and Ivory Coast renewing their rivalry.
\nThe Chairman of Ghana’s Football Association said \u201cthere is no better description of this group.\u201d
\n\u201cIvory Coast and Ghana are two of the best teams in Africa.\u201d
\n\u201cThe group is interesting because Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso and Togo are all our neightbours.
\n\u201cTogo has Adebayor, one of the best players in the world, and Burkina Faso’s Moumouni Dagano is the top scorer of the World Cup qualifying campaign,\u201d he said.
\nHowever history favours Ghana as they’ve met seven times and the Ivorians have won just one of those encounters.
\nEgypt versus Nigeria looks like an exciting fixture to open Group C on January 12 in Benguela.
\nNigeria’s coach Shaiubu Amodou was present at the draw and said that on paper Nigeria should emerge from Group B, but he added a word of caution.
\n\u201cThere are no small teams in football anymore\u201d he said.
\nNigeria’s former captain Sunday Oliseh described Nigeria’s group as a \u201cdelicate\u201d one.
\n\u201cMozambique gave us a lot of hassle during qualifying\u201d he said.
\nOliseh also thanked Mozambique for helping Nigeria qualify for the World Cup.
\nThey scored a lot goal against Tunisia in the final qualifying game which helped to put Nigeria through to South Africa 2010.
\nMozambique’s most capped player and recent goal scorer Tico-Tico said he thought it was a tough draw for his side.
\n\u201cWe will just have to compete and see what happens\u201d he said.
\n\u201cEgypt are the champions of Africa so that won\u2019t be easy but if we believe in ourselves maybe we can spring some surprises,\u201d he says.
\n\u201cNigeria and Egypt would seem the obvious teams to qualify but anything can happen,\u201d he said.
\nFormer Cameroon striker, Patrick Mboma said that Group D will be no pushover either.
\n\u201cWe’ve only recently seen what Gabon can do’ he said.
\nHowever he predicted that the Indomitable Lions would reach the semi-finals, after which anything can happen.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a new Indomitable Lions, a new captain, a new coach and hopefully a new reality, and I hope we can start the new year in the best way,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The draw for the Angola 2010 Africa Cup of Nations took place yesterday in Luanda, the Angola capital with Nigeria pairing Mozambique, Benin and defending championships, Egypt in Group C. The draw of the 27th edition of the championship also pitched host Angola with Mali, Algeria, and Malawi in Group A, while Ivory Coast, Ghana, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4551\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}