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AFCON FINAL: Salah Vs Mane

By Prosper E. on February 5, 2022

By Segun Odemgbami

The African Cup of Nations, Africa’s most prestigious football competition, has finally arrived the global stage of recognition.
The continent earned it in three weeks of a great football feast, putting on display the full array of African football – the power, physicality and speed of Sub-Saharan players, the technical skills and organised play of North Africans, the raw and unadulterated free spirit of the new teams from the deep-South, and energy, fighting spirit and endless running of the Central and East Africans.

It has been the best of African football in full colour. For the finals match tomorrow between Senegal and Egypt, there could not have been a better epilogue – Africa’s two best players, Egypt’s Salah, and Senegal’s Mane, leading their countries to an epic match to decide who takes away the trophy.

FIFA and some European Club managers that wanted the championship cancelled initially have eaten humble pie and are now enjoying champagne football of a different temperament

Now, they know better. African football has come of age. Through the players’ performances no one dares in future to raise questions about the quality of the African championship any more, and make an issue of players leaving their European teams to play in Africa. The spectacle will now be part of the global football diet every two years.

For Nigerians, it is ironic that the team that the Super Eagles defeated almost without breaking sweat at the start of the championship has become the most tactically competent team of the championship. They are looking more and more like champions with the real prospect of adding one more to their chest of trophies, extending their record as the most successful national team in the history of the African Cup of Nations.

I am wagering on Egypt to lift the trophy, in consolation that it could also have been Nigeria, were the gods not to have been ‘angry’.

I also predict that against Egypt, Mane will have his best game, but will not go home with the trophy.