Sunday, January 24, 2010

Ghana and Algeria in the semifinal!

There were two major surprises in the African Cup quarterfinals today.
In the first one, the home side of Angola were surprisingly eliminated by Ghana, who without their star Michael Essien managed a somewhat fortunate and hard-fought 1-0 victory on a goal by Stade Rennais' Asamoah Gyan. Ghana is set to play the winner of Zambia-Nigeria, and a match against their West African rivals Nigeria would surely be a drama!
Go Ghana!

The other quarterfinal saw an even greater surprise as Ivory Coast was eliminated by the interesting Algerians in a dramatic match: in the last minute of the match Ivory Coast went ahead 2-1 on a truly spectacular goal by Galatasaray's Kader Keita. But in the dying seconds of the match Algeria threw everything forward, and managed to equalize by the big Glasgow Rangers defender Madjid Bougherra. The match went into extra time, and Hamer Bouazza from Blackpool scored the winner for the Algerians.
Algeria are surprise qualifers for the World Cup in South Africa, and are not considered to have a chance against England, the USA and Slovenia. But surely these teams should be watching the Algerians!
Algeria will surely have a difficult semifinal as they will face the winner of Egypt-Cameroon. The Egyptians will surely want to show that they are the better team after Algeria elminiated them from the World Cup, prompting a diplomatic crisis between the two countries. However, with today's result Algeria have proven that they are indeed a match for any team! Look out for Algeria!

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