Nigeria cemented
their position as the best team at the African Nations Cup with a
deserved title victory on Sunday in a tournament offering further
evidence that football in the continent has reached a fascinating
crossroads.
The 1-0 win over outsiders Burkina Faso, who also defied the
odds to reach the final with a series of performances that continually
exceeded expectations, was completed with a young and inexperienced
squad that surprised many seasoned observers.
Coach Stephen Keshi, under intense pressure back home to lift
the cup for the first time since he himself captained the last Super
Eagles side to victory in 1994, ignored the critics and picked a squad
in which 14 of his players were 24 or under.
And if proof was needed that Keshi had got it right, the
stunning cup-winning goal was scored by 24-year-old Sunday Mba, a
midfielder with just a handful of caps to his name who still plays
domestically in Nigeria.
Nigeria's performance reflected that of the tournament's
progress. The competition started slowly with 12 draws in the opening 24
group matches, before the real excitement started in the knockout
stage.
The eventual champions were also slow out of the blocks with draws against Burkina Faso and Zambia before two late
Victor Moses penalties gave them a 2-0 win over Ethiopia.
They then hit form with their 2-1 quarter-final win over
tournament favourites Ivory Coast and reached their peak with a 4-1
demolition of Mali in the semi-finals.
Their win in the final was measured, mature and tactically
astute, with the Super Eagles surviving a desperate onslaught from the
Burkinabe in the final minutes.
But while the tournament was an undoubted success for Nigeria,
who Keshi maintains "have only reached 80 percent" of their potential,
it also represented something of a triumph for a number of the
continent's middle-ranking or emerging nations.
As Keshi said earlier in the tournament: "You can no longer differentiate so much between which teams are better.
"In the old days, you could predict how many goals one team was
going to score against the other but now you don't know what is going
to happen. You might think one side will win but you don't know. I think
this is wonderful for African football.
"The competition is so tight. You look at the likes of Ethiopia
and Cape Verde and some of the other countries. I am very impressed
with their performances and the standard they are reaching."
Burkina Faso led the way for the emerging teams, a country that
before this tournament had never won a Nations Cup finals match on
foreign soil and had gone 17 matches without a victory since they
reached the semi-finals at home in 1998.
Others followed suit, including tiny Cape Verde on their finals
debut and a spirited Ethiopia, who did not look out of place in the
tournament despite a 31-year absence.
Also impressing were first-time quarter-finalists
Togo
and Mali, who lifted spirits in the impoverished and conflict-ridden
country by finishing with the bronze medal for the second successive
tournament.
Naturally there were failures too.
Pre-tournament favourites Ivory Coast flattered to deceive by
becoming the first team to qualify for the quarter-finals with a match
to spare, before suffering an upset in Rustenburg when Mba scored his
first superb goal of the tournament.
The defeat was a painful and significant one as it leaves Ivorian soccer closer to a dead end than a crossroads.
Nigeria1 - 0Burkina Faso
