Despite high-quality matches, Senegal’s meeting with hosts Morocco may pale with the World Cup looming
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ometimes a tournament’s greatest strength can be its greatest weakness. In part because of the excellent playing conditions, this has been an Africa Cup of Nations devoid of shocks. The better teams keep winning. There has been a lot of good football, but not a huge amount of memorable football.
And the consequence is that, in the final, we have the two best teams, or certainly the best team in north Africa against the best team in sub-Saharan Africa: the hosts and World Cup semi-finalists Morocco against Senegal, who have reached three of the past four Afcon finals.
In that sense this tournament has been an organiser’s dream, a content-production machine: 44 games to get to quarter-finals featuring the eight teams who were highest-ranked for the purposes of the draw. Two of the quarter-finals were games of genuine quality and if the two semi-finals – one goal between them – fell into the sterile stereotype of the Cup of Nations, they were at least tense and meaningful.
