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 Post subject: Africa Cup of Nations
PostPosted: Mon Oct 10, 2011 8:36 am 
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oh dear, someone's getting a tyre necklace in the morning...

South Africa miss out on Africa Cup of Nations after misreading rules• Coach wrongly settles for draw after misunderstanding rules
• Niger qualify for finals at South Africa's expense


Sunday 9 October 2011 14.44 BST
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Drawn losers: South Africa's players celebrate after their match against Sierra Leone thinking they had qualified. They hadn't. Photograph: Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters

A hideous miscalculation of competition rules by South Africa's coach has deprived them of a place in the Africa Cup of Nations finals after they played for a draw in a match they ended up needing to win.

Pitso Mosimane has admitted he had changed tactics and played for a point in Saturday's final qualifier at home to Sierra Leone, thinking it was sufficient to win his team's group and seal a place in the 2012 finals.


But South Africa actually needed a win to avoid being eliminated on head-to-head results between the three teams tied at the top, and no one appeared to have studied the regulations correctly. So despite playing out the draw they were pipped by Niger, who qualified for the first time.


More embarrassingly, the Bafana Bafana celebrated at the end of the scoreless stalemate in Nelspruit, thinking they had done enough to advance to next year's finals, which will be co-hosted by Gabon and Equatorial Guinea.

"It's very sad for South Africa because the country deserves to be in next year's Nations Cup. I feel like I have failed," Mosimane said.

The coach, who took over after the World Cup, was under the impression that goal difference was the determining factor to decide the group winners and when he was told that the leaders Niger were losing in Egypt, he changed tactics and settled for a draw.

Niger had led South Africa by a point going into the final round of qualifiers on Saturday.

"Do you think I would have left [the striker Lehlohonolo] Majoro on the bench and put on a midfielder if I knew that we needed a goal? It doesn't make sense," Mosimane said, before criticising the regulations.

"Africa is a jungle, my friend," he added. "The European and South American formats are so much better because everything is running smoothly, but it's very difficult to play in Africa."

Mosimane was not the only one to fall foul of the rules. The state-run African Broadcasting Corporation proclaimed qualification and the South African Football Association president Kirsten Nematandani went on TV to congratulate the team. He and Mosimane are now likely to face calls to resign.

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PostPosted: Mon Oct 10, 2011 8:47 am 
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I have no sympathy for them tbh...Tough luck basically, don't play for a draw. :cool:


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PostPosted: Mon Oct 10, 2011 8:53 am 
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Well we know what that's like... I wonder if Pitso Mosimane is the reincarnation of Alan Ball?!


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PostPosted: Mon Oct 10, 2011 9:54 am 
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servse them right for playing for a draw. ridiculous. how do you play for a draw ffs?!

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PostPosted: Mon Oct 10, 2011 9:59 am 
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Danny's Studs wrote:
servse them right for playing for a draw. ridiculous. how do you play for a draw ffs?!


See England and Montenegro in the last 5 minutes of Friday's game. If I was Switzerland I'd be livid.


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PostPosted: Mon Oct 10, 2011 10:01 am 
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nah you wouldn't, you'd be neutral.

and sitting on a pile of gold teeth.

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PostPosted: Mon Oct 10, 2011 10:03 am 
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gibbonicus_andronicus wrote:
nah you wouldn't, you'd be neutral.

and sitting on a pile of gold teeth.


Nah 95% of the Swiss team are from the Balkans originally. They love a good ruck.


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PostPosted: Wed Oct 12, 2011 11:33 am 
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"South Africa's spectacular failure to reach the Africa Cup of Nations got me wondering," writes Ed Irwin. "Have any other teams ever played for the wrong result?"

The Knowledge


More Knowledge: More of Your Football Questions Answered Buy More Knowledge from Guardian Books
"Spectacular" is one word for South Africa's footballing weekend. "Hugely embarrassing and laughable mess" are several others. If you missed it, Bafana Bafana went into their final group game against Sierra Leone level on eight points with their opponents and one point behind Niger, who were taking on Egypt.


Just over an hour into the game in Nelspruit it was 0-0, but Niger were 3-0 down in Cairo. So as it stood, three teams were level on nine points. South Africa had comfortably the best goal difference, but, unfortunately for them, the head-to-head record was the one that mattered and on that criterion Niger led by a point (Niger had picked up six points against South Africa and Sierra Leone, South Africa only five against Sierra Leone and Niger).


South Africa, then, needed a goal. Unfortunately their coach, Pitso Mosimane, wasn't up to speed on the regulations and decided to play for the draw. Which they got. Cue celebrations on the pitch, and then recriminations. Mosimane admitted he had been at fault. "Do you think I would have left [striker Lehlohonolo] Majoro on the bench and put on a midfielder if I knew that we needed a goal? It doesn't make sense," he said. "I feel like I have failed," he added, somehow substituting the words "feel like I have" for "have definitely and unforgivably". "The European and South American formats are so much better," he whined, seemingly unaware that qualification for Euro 2012 works on exactly the same basis.


The South African Football Association has even had the gall to write to the Confederation of African Football challenging the rules. "We are not satisfied about the decision, our CEO has written to CAF and we want to engage further," said the Safa vice-president, Mandla "Shoes" Mazibuko. "As far as we are concerned, a goal-difference rule should be the first criteria."


So an embarrassing episode for all concerned, and one only compounded by their refusal to accept it. Still, they're not alone. Back in 1995-96 the battle to avoid relegation from the Premier League had gone right down to the wire.


Coming into the final day, Manchester City, Southampton and Coventry City were all level on 33 points. Alan Ball's Manchester City, whose goal difference was seven goals worse than their rivals, occupied 18th spot, the final relegation place (the fates of QPR and Bolton having already been sealed). They welcomed third-placed Liverpool to Maine Road on the final day, Coventry hosted mid-table Leeds and Southampton took on Wimbledon, themselves not mathematically certain of survival, at the Dell.


Things didn't start well in Manchester – a Steve Lomas own goal after six minutes gave Liverpool the lead and four minutes before half-time Ian Rush made it 2-0 to the visitors. At the break the games at Highfield Road and the Dell were both goalless.


Hope for City came in the shape of an Uwe Rösler penalty after 71 minutes and seven minutes later Kit Symons equalised. Maine Road went bananas, but the home side still needed to score again if Coventry and Southampton held on for draws. Ball and his players were perfectly aware of this, but what they hadn't counted on was duff information. Somehow Ball got the impression that Southampton had gone behind. "He called me over and said: 'We're up, kill this game off, just do whatever you can," recalled Lomas years later. It was the unfortunate Northern Irishman who took the ball to the corner flag and began playing for time.


It was the substituted Niall Quinn who alerted Lomas to the mistake. "I had gone off 15 minutes from time and was watching it on TV," said Quinn. "So I had to run up the tunnel and get the message on that we needed another." It was all in vain. It ended 2-2 and City were relegated on goal difference. Somehow Ball survived the debacle, but after three games of the following season he was out.


But there's more. Jonathan Wilson points us towards to what he describes as "the famous case of Olt Scornicesti" but what everyone else would call "the little-known case of Olt Scornicesti". Scornicesti was the home village of Nicolae Ceausescu, Romania's brutal and despotic communist leader between 1965 and 1989. Jonathan picks up the story in his excellent Behind The Curtain (available in all good bookshops, etc and so forth):



"Under Florin Halagian – a coach who has been accused of beating his charges, and would commonly kick under-performing players off the team bus on the way back from away games – the side from Ceausescu's home village miraculously earned three successive promotions in the late 70s. On one occasion they put 17 past Electrodul Slatina in the second half to win 18-0, having erroneously been informed that their rivals Flacara Moreni, who were 2-0 up at half-time, were winning 9-0."


The problem was one of communication. With no phone line connecting the two villages, men were stationed between the two grounds with radios and instructed to relay the score to Scornicesti. Unfortunately, but rather predictably, this game of Chinese whispers went awry. On hearing the wrong score, the referee, having already blown for full-time, apparently dragged the sides out of the changing rooms and played enough injury time for the home side to rack up the goals they needed, thus securing Scornicesti's promotion.


Other examples of fans, rather than the players or manager, getting it wrong are listed in this old Knowledge, but here's an addendum: on the final day of the season at Gigg Lane in May 2009, a late goal sparked a pitch invasion, with several hundred fans seeming to believe the strike had secured promotion. It hadn't. The Shakers were still in the play-offs and the delay did no one any favours.




i always thought it was mcmanorwoman that scored against us?

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PostPosted: Wed Oct 12, 2011 11:40 am 
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Danny's Studs wrote:
servse them right for playing for a draw. ridiculous. how do you play for a draw ffs?!


Please refer all correspondence to:

S Lomas
N Summerbee

They had no worries with it. :cool:

Edit: oh look, there's a big post about it up there ^^^^

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PostPosted: Fri Nov 04, 2011 4:16 pm 
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Kevin Prince Boateng has retired from International Football (Ghana) at the age of 24.

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PostPosted: Mon Dec 26, 2011 1:22 pm 
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Tottenham's Emmanuel Adebayor says call-ups could cost Manchester City
• City will lose Touré brothers to Africa Cup of Nations
• No Tottenham players involved in the tournament


reddit this
Dominic Fifield
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 25 December 2011 23.00 GMT
Article history

Emmanuel Adebayor celebrates his goal against Chelsea in the 1-1 draw at White Hart Lane on Thursday. Photograph: John Sibley/Action Images
Emmanuel Adebayor believes Tottenham Hotspur retain realistic aspirations of claiming a first league title in more than half a century and hopes his side can take advantage of the departure of players from rival clubs for the Africa Cup of Nations.

Spurs will not be depleted by the tournament, which takes place in Gabon and Equatorial Guinea from 21 January to 12 February, with none of their players involved following the failures of Cameroon, South Africa and Togo to qualify. While Chelsea contemplate the departures of Didier Drogba and Salomon Kalou to play for Ivory Coast immediately after the FA Cup third-round tie against Portsmouth on 8 January, the Premier League leaders Manchester City, from whom Adebayor is on a season-long loan, will lose Yaya and Kolo Touré at the same time.

The Spurs loanee has identified that as a potential source of disruption at the Etihad Stadium and further cause for optimism at White Hart Lane. Asked whether Tottenham, who are nine points from the summit with a game in hand on the leaders, can still claim the title, Adebayor said: "Why not? Manchester City are first at the moment but they still have to play all the big clubs because we've only had the first half of the season. That is what is going to be over very soon, and then we attack January. Are City going to keep playing their football the way they are now right up until the end of the season? We will have to wait and see.

"But, while we have everyone here, they have two players going to the African Cup of Nations. Kolo Touré is not playing a lot but he is a great player for them. Yaya Touré has been amazing for them this year, so I don't know. In football you can suffer two or three injuries in a week – that has happened to us with Jermain Defoe and Aaron Lennon. We all know they have a great team with a great team spirit and, at the moment, they are playing good football. But, if they get a couple of injuries, I think it would be very difficult for them."

There is positive news for Spurs on the injury front, with Rafael van der Vaart set to face Norwich on Tuesday night after the hamstring injury he suffered against Chelsea last week proved less serious than first feared. "He looks OK," the manager, Harry Redknapp, told Sky Sports News on Sunday. "He looks like he could be fit … He went for a scan and it didn't show a tear." Van der Vaart trained on Sunday and is due to do so on Monday. "I think I'm going to be fine," he said.

Spurs have suffered a solitary defeat – at Stoke – since losing their opening two games of the season against the Manchester clubs and are not due to confront any of the other title contenders until they visit City on 22 January. After Norwich come games against Swansea, West Bromwich Albion, Everton and Wolverhampton Wanderers, matches they will consider as opportunities to retain momentum in pursuit of a first league championship since 1961.

"I'm not saying they are going to be easy games but, if you want to be in the top four, those are the types of games that you have to win, home or away," Adebayor said. "We have to do no matter what it takes to win those games if we are going to achieve that much. Otherwise, forget about it. But for me Tottenham are improving game by game. We have better players this year. We are improving and we have to keep our confidence high."

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PostPosted: Tue Dec 27, 2011 11:04 am 
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Fucking axe international football and be done with it.


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PostPosted: Wed Jan 11, 2012 1:05 pm 
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Ivory Coast have a warm up game on Friday against Tunisia and Lebanon on the Monday.

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PostPosted: Mon Jan 16, 2012 2:21 pm 
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Watching Ivory Coast v Libya, in Foreign but can't find any lineups anywhere, Haven't heard Yaya or Kolo mentioned. Heard Gervinho mentioned a few times. Just seen Drogba to.

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PostPosted: Mon Jan 16, 2012 2:42 pm 
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33 mins in i just heard Kolos name and i think i heard Yayas before.

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PostPosted: Mon Jan 16, 2012 3:27 pm 
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1-0 IC Kalou

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PostPosted: Sun Jan 22, 2012 10:08 am 
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Ivory Coast kick off their campaign today at 4pm against Sudan.

For anyone wanting to watch any games just use the links on the very first post in the PL today thread.



Zambia beat Senegal yesterday 2-1 in the opening game.

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PostPosted: Sun Jan 22, 2012 4:15 pm 
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Kolo and Yaya playing.

Ivory Coast V Sudan

http://www.realtvsport.com/channel-5.php

That camera angle is crazy. Looks like it's being filmed from space


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PostPosted: Sun Jan 22, 2012 4:29 pm 
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O Blue wrote:
Kolo and Yaya playing.

Ivory Coast V Sudan

http://www.realtvsport.com/channel-5.php

That camera angle is crazy. Looks like it's being filmed from space

Its on eurosport/hd channels now too..

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PostPosted: Sun Jan 22, 2012 4:42 pm 
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1-0 Ivory Coast, drogba


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