Egypt-Ivory Coast, penalty shoot out.
Two round 16 games today in AFCON, the first one was Egypt against Ivory Coast, two of the better known African teams, both countries have lots of players in Europe, there was really no favorite for this game, and as I expected (that's a good one, I thought Ivory Coast would win) it finished 0-0 after 120 excruciating minutes of hard fought football, and I must say Egypt played better.
This meant penalty shoot outs, and we had some very good penalty kickers in this game, except of course the guy whose shot was blocked by the Egyptian goal keeper, so Egypt won 5-4. The pundits were saying there is no luck involved in a penalty shoot out, I think pundits don't even know what they are talking about, A penalty shootout means you have players who are extenuated, physically at an end, the pressure is great, the only one who is cool is the goal keeper of each team. So the player tries to put the ball away from the goalkeeper and most of the time manages it but then as in this game the goalkeeper takes the right choice and the kick is weak enough for him to stop it. I say at this instance luck has more to do with it than expertise.
The other game was Mali-Equatorial Guinea which ended with another 0-0 draw after 120 and a penalty shoot out. Here again the betting was easy, Mali is the better, more experienced team so they had to win. And again I was proved wrong, Equatorial Guinea won the penalty shoot out 6-5, in this one there were some very bad shots, probably the game was more physical than Egypt-Ivory Coast and the players were even more extenuated.
But I must say, these games are really good, much better than what we have in CONCACAF, and I am seeing teams that I had no idea were so good at football. By the way CONCACAF continues its World Cup qualifiers tomorrow, we (Honduras play Canada). I believe we win this game, Canada has a lot of injuries and the game will be in Honduras. Not that winning would do us any good, we are out.