Thursday 14 January 2010

Thursday 14 January 2010 – 148 DAYS TO THE WORLD CUP

Today is day five of the African Cup Of Nations and the beginning of the second round of group matches. After Angola’s shocking performance on the opening day against Mali there match today against Malawi is truly one that could either way especially after the Malawians scored such an impressive 3-0 victory against England’s World Cup opponents Algeria. As a result this game should be an open and exciting encounter where my gut instinct suggests Malawi will book their place in the second round.

Algeria will be looking to save their place in the tournament and will be taking heart from the manner in which their opponents Mali conceded four goals but they will also have noted how they staged one of the greatest comebacks of all time. With this in mind you feel that Mali now have a lot of heat behind them and most definitely they will be hoping to capitalise and repeat on their comeback success from the opening day. Again this should be a very open game with both teams looking to correct mistakes from their opening matches. Realistically though the Mali comeback against Angola was something of a freak of nature and it should be expected that Algeria will now get their shit together and pull through.

Yesterday saw the fifth World Cup qualifier of the tournament in action and for a fifth time the apparent team with pedigree failed to win as Cameroon went down 1-0 to Gabon much to the surprise of many. Perhaps Cameroon circa now aren’t so great after all.

In the other game Tunisia and Zambia fought out a 1-1 draw in what is not likely to be regarded one of the matches of the tournament as Zambia took the lead in the 19th minute before surrendering it five minutes before half time.

Back in England the headlines concerned Reading knocking Liverpool out of the FA Cup in the own backyard of Anfield. Before the end potential World Cup stars Gerrard and Torres were already off the pitch in a move that will have caused/created Benitez his Nth headache of the season. At least now that the club is out of the competition it is one less set of matches Gerrard etc will have to partake in before South Africa.

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