Lessons from AFCON Finals

It is no news that the African Cup of Nation tournament came to an end yesterday amidst a whole lot of emotional rush which came from both teams and their respective fans. For as much as I can remember, I have been a lover of football which is why I love to follow tournaments just like the one that has ended. One thing is that I have developed an attitude towards football that I do not only watch these matches for the fun of it rather I look beyond the fun in others to pick out different lessons in them. The AFCON tournament is not different because right from the beginning of the tournament I was able to grab lessons from the different teams that played both the one’s that performed well and the one’s that failed woefully. I have noticed that a lot of people just spend time and watch football matches without looking beyond the fun. Let us look at the third-place match between the host country Cameroun and Burkina Faso. Anyone who watched that watch not just for the fun of it would have learnt one big life lesson that most people struggle with to date.

Burkina Faso entered the game with a strong resolve to come out as the winners and their level of resolve could be seen in the way they utilised every opportunity that presented itself to them. The first goal came at about 20 minutes into the game and Cameroun began to strike as hard as they could while the Burkina boys were carefully waiting for an opportunity to break into another counter-attack. This was not an easy move because they had to maintain their resolve and focus without letting the Cameroonians overturn the scoreline. The first lesson to learn from the Burkina boys was their strong Resolve and Patience. As the second opportunity showed itself they took it very clean and turned the scoreline to 2:0 in the last minutes of the second half. As the second half of the game began, they sized another great opportunity and increased the goal tally to 3:0. Now, this was where they made the mistake of a lifetime. Their coach who thought the match has been won told them to play more defensive instead of maintaining their formal pattern in other to score more goals and this was around 50 minutes of the game. What the coach forgot is that there is no winner in football until the match is finished.

The greatest lesson of that night was Persistence and Perseverance. Ordinarily, most persons would give up the moment they face disappointments in whatever they lay their hands on. The story of the Cameroonians was that of bravery and strong resolve. Imagine playing at home and also being the host nation only to be suffering 3 nil defeats around 50 minutes of the game in front of your home fans. They were able to hold their ground even when all odds seem to be working against them, they never gave up. The Cameroonians kept on pushing even as the time was fast getting to the finish. After around 80 minutes of patience and perseverance, they were able to get a goal making the scoreline 3:1. There is something about results in life, whenever you are working for something and at some point, you get a glimpse of light or result, your resolve to succeed becomes stronger. This was exactly the case of Cameroonian players. As they scored the first goal, their morale became high and within the next 3 minutes, they scored the second goal. As they kept pushing it became obvious that the Burkina plays have completely lost focus and were just trying to understand what had just happened. As they were trying to defend in other to end the match in a 3:2 scoreline, they received the shock of their life.

The Cameroonians scored again the third time and the scoreline became 3:3 and this was just a few minutes to end the match. This became a great comeback for the Host nation (Cameroon). As they entered into a penalty shoot-out, the Cameroonians defeated Burkina Faso and became the third runner up in the AFCON tournament. The very last lesson I must not fail to point out to all of us is the greatest lesson we all must learn in life. This lesson was evident in the final match that was between Egypt and Senegal. From the beginning of the match, I noticed that the Egyptians had a game plan to hold the scoreline to a draw because they believed that they had an upper hand when it comes to a penalty shoot-out. This reason was that they have played about two penalty shootouts in the tournament and have been able to win all the two shootouts. Truth must be told at this point. Egyptian goalkeeper showed that he is very good in a penalty shoot-out and because of that, they played the game with the hopes of winning through penalties.

Lesson Learnt from the Final

When you allow yourself to become overconfident in whatever you do, you will no longer see the need to practice in other to get better. More so, you will begin to see no reason to try out other options that may be presenting themselves on the table for you. This was what happened to the Egyptians. They had very good strikers and midfielders that could have given them the trophy without penalty shoot outs but because they got overconfident, they decided to take the game to a penalty shoot-out. To their greatest shock, the Senegalese players were very good at taking penalties and their goalkeeper who has never been in any penalty shoot-out in the entire tournament was able to save just one of the Egyptians penalty kicks. It became the most embarrassing defeat because they had the opportunity to win the cup if they had played the game without thoughts of going for a penalty shoot-out. Do not allow yourself to get Over Confident in anything you do because once that happens, you stand the risk of losing focus on other options that may come your way.

Did you watch the watch? If you did, what lessons did you learn?

Davinchysax loves you.

All images were taken with my mobile phone.