Friday, 27 January 2012

2012 ACN: Group C Game Two

Group C is already done and dusted bar the shouting, in extremely dramatic circumstances. The day kicked off with Niger against Tunisia. Youseff Msakni scored his second goal of the tournament after just three minutes before William N'Gounou equalised seven minutes later. But Tunisia guaranteed themselves progression at Niger's expense in the last minute of normal time, Issam Jemaa scoring the winning goal.

If that wasn't dramatic enough, then Gabon's competition with Equatorial Guinea for who can secure the biggest shock went into round two. Senegal were knocked out by Equatorial Guinea and Gabon retorted by eliminating Morocco. Houssine Kharja scored his second goal of the tournament after 23-minutes to give Morocco the lead. But a fantastic volley from Yann Bidonga on 76-minutes and a surprise swivelled goal from Daniel Cousin two minutes put Gabon ahead and looked to be through. However, the game wasn't completed and Morocco were given a dubious penalty for a harsh handball on 90-minutes, Kharja stepped up and converted to make it 2-2 with five minutes of injury time to play. If Morocco thought that they had salvaged themselves then they should have thought again. A horror tackle from Mehdi Benatia, who was extremely lucky to have only received a yellow card, meant Gabon had a 96th-minute free-kick from twenty yards. Bruno Zita stepped over the ball before dispatching a wonderful shot past Nadir Lamyaghri to earn Gabon their second win of the tournament, joining their co-hosts in the quarter finals.    

No comments:

Post a Comment