On a normal day, I would not put on my thinking cap to write on football because I feel a lot of sports journalists do that often. I always want to be unique and appealing in terms of my writings and take different dimensions on key issues. This time around I want have a bite of this tasty cherry. Ghanaians are very passionate when it comes to football and I am of no exception to this, I also love football and when I was a kid I thought I might be a sport journalist but situation alters dreams. I will take delight in highlighting on the just ended AFCON 2017.
AFCON 2017 was the 31st edition organized by the Confederation of African Football (CAF) with Issa Hayatou being the captain of the ship. The AFCON 2017 was hosted by Gabon and I must say the AFCON has been thrilling, exciting, nerve wrecking, surprising, heartbreaking etc. The mood correlated with the plethora of games we witnessed. There were a couple of injuries, good goalkeeping, great goals and diverse celebrations and this is good for African Football.
Tournament of such magnitude will always attract spectacles from the world and I am highly elated we did well with the organization and the kind of football played. I would not talk about the highs without touching on the lows. One of the flaws of the tournament was the pitches the games were played on, very poor and even caused some of the injuries. The second flaw I noticed was the officiating. Some of the officiating were bad and I believe moving forward we have to take a critical look at these things because they are indispensable. I want to use this opportunity to congratulate the top four teams Cameroon (1st), Egypt (2nd), Burkina Faso (3rd) and Ghana (4th).
Cameroon were not favourites from the on start, in other words nobody ticked them to win the AFCON 2017. This is because they had lost their key players due to certain reasons so the highlight was not on them. This is a team that surprised the world with their performance. You could clearly see how hungry they were for the trophy. They exhibited great teamwork and they worked hard for it so for me I was not astonished they won the trophy. When they eliminated Senegal, scored Ghana in the semifinal, my dark vision became bright and I saw how dangerous they were and will win the trophy. I am not a soothsayer but I saw it coming. My favourite in the Cameroon team was Fabrice Ondua. Egypt were one of the favourites even before the tournament began.