acrossthepond

Get the fuck in!! Eat shit you boring wankers.

Nearly cracked up laughing several times in the middle of an exam due to that, thanks. My students would've looked at me like I had 3 heads.

The caption says "Dakar is a party and it's all because Senegal have brought home their first continental title. It's been a pretty poor African Cup as far as spectacle goes, but that hardly matters when you're the champions." And congratulations to them. They were by far the better team on the day and throughout the entire tournament, and I was pleased that if someone had to win it besides us, it was Cisse, because it's good to see African coaches succeed.

That's the second penalty loss in a continental final in a year as well for me, fucking Jonah. Ugh.

Got what we deserved, which was nothing. A dour, wretched performance lacking in any sort of ambition. Horrendous game. Gabaski can hold his head up high; I'm not sure too many of his teammates have distinguished themselves. Certainly none in the attacking third.

Mission 2/3 complete.

I hope you're right. Trezeguet and Zizo being readied to come on now so Quieroz has figured out we'd not score with this lineup in a hundred years. I imagine Mostafa Mohamed must know some pretty influential people in either the Egyptian FA or government because he is about as useless a footballer I've seen in red in many years. Marmoush as well, I'm not sure an Egyptian has even touched the ball on the entire left flank so far. Atrocious.

The way Egypt play, I think that might be true. Senegal on the other hand are the real deal, if we win this it'll be daylight robbery. Mission: Bore the opposition into submission is 1/3 complete, only the second half and extra time to go until we, er, contend a penalty shootout against the world's best keeper.

Horrifying penalty from Mane, no quality or finesse to it, simply blasted down the middle and easily saved by Gabaski. That said the cracks are there, Abdelmoneim is there for the taking and he's now on a yellow from the 5th minute. If we try to sit back this match will turn into a disaster.

Egypt go for their record 8th African title today and as I've not got a podcast or a YouTube channel, I'm going to inflict my final thoughts on their campaign and on this year's AFCON in general on all of you poor suckers. Whisper it quietly but this year's African Cup was a particularly poor spectacle. Expanding the size of the tournament from 16 teams to 24 enabled a lot of what we'll politely call "also-rans" to get in, and despite the intrigue of having several newcomers compete, the group stages were drab and mostly boring. Very few games saw more than one goal, and soul-sapping humidity made the final 20 minutes of matches into a slogfest of tired legs repeatedly surrendering and regaining possession to no purpose. Next we'll get into the dubious structural decisions made by CAN and by Cameroon, starting with the decision to prohibit any postponements for any reason. I understand how difficult it is to postpone games during a knockout tournament, so the decision to expand squads to 28 players was an intelligent one, but forcing Comoros to play without a keeper during the round of 16 was particularly harsh and a bit of an embarrassment. One might argue that Comoros should've brought a fourth-string keeper as many teams such as Senegal and Egypt did, but we're already talking about a nation of less than a million people. Then there was the questionable decision to host group stage matches in a region plagued by separatist activity (luckily nothing went wrong) and of course the disastrous Olembe stampede. Moving past the tournament itself and on to Egypt's campaign, it was as soul-crushingly dull as any of the football we've played in the last decade. Hot off being the worst team at the 2018 World Cup and a truly calamitous round of 16 exit in Cairo in 2019, it seemed there were no further depths to slip to, although our first match against Nigeria forecasted nothing but further pain to come, and we were very close to elimination against Guinea-Bissau when their equalising goal was very softly ruled out by VAR. It's not a surprise. The weaknesses in our squad are plain for all to see. All but six of our squad members play their football in the Egyptian league, which is among the strongest leagues in Africa, but is no match even for second division European leagues. Most of our Francophone rivals were fully stocked with European-based players with much more experience at a higher level. The entire plan, as always since his emergence, seemed to be to get the ball to Salah and wait for him to perform miracles. But you just have to look at the mediocre players we've surrounded him with to see why that plan never bears fruit. Mostafa Mohamed has seemed incapable of getting a shot on target, while Mohamed Sharif does not even know what formation we're playing. All of our play comes down the wings, with either Salah or the ineffective Marmoush relied upon to get balls into the box. It's no surprise then that we have scored just 4 goals in the entire tournament. But for whatever reason, Quieroz sees fit to continue with Marmoush down the left wing when he has Trezeguet, a proven Premier League player, at his disposal. I would be remiss now if I didn't mention that we have conceded only two goals total, with one of them a penalty early on against Morocco. One benefit of our overly defensive play is that our goal is rarely threatened, which is just as well because our keepers have been at the wars. #1 El Shenaawy succumbed to injury during the round of 16, with his replacement Abou Gabal "Gabaski" having featured just once for Egypt in a 15-year career. Gabaski himself then had to be substituted against Morocco, meaning our third-choice keeper Mohamed Sobhy had to come on for the greater portion of extra-time, and although Gabaski recovered in time to start against Cameroon he was visibly struggling with injury toward the end of the match, making his remarkable performance during the penalty shootout all the more incredible. It remains to be seen whether Quieroz will now rush back El Shenaawy, persist with Gabaski who has played heroically but is clearly not fully fit, or turn to our untested 3rd and 4th keepers. We now come up against a star-studded Senegal side who have scored 9 goals while conceding just 2. They can boast Chelsea, Liverpool, PSG, and Bayern among the clubs their starters play for (not to mention Palace, Leicester, and Napoli) and have the best keeper in Africa in their ranks, meaning our strategy of boring the opposition into submission then beating them on penalties with our superior keepers is not going to have the same effect as in earlier rounds. That's not even bringing up the fact that Egypt have played extra time in our last three matches, while Senegal have hardly been troubled on their path to the final. I'm no master tactician, but I'd say our best chance of winning this match is in 90 minutes, and that we'll have to present more of a threat going forward from BOTH flanks if we hope to see anything other than Salah being marked out of the game and a dire 0-2 or 0-3 loss. Therefore I would swap Marmoush for Trezeguet and start the match with Zizo in CM in order to freshen up a tired lineup, and try to play an attacking game with Elneny sitting in front of the back four and spraying long balls out to Salah and Trezeguet.

Or that fucking cringe posted here not too long ago of Rees-Mogg blathering on about a load of nonsense when asked a serious question. I'll dig it up but it fucking boiled my piss, you could tell what a clever cunt he thought he was.

I agree, I don't think the job's finished until we've brought in another forward.

Wise moves to pass up Ramsey and Alli imo, we've got Bruno and both will be on ludicrous wages. Any word on Zapata?

Didn't someone - I think Tom - recently say Fop turned out to be like a murder-suicide case? I meant to ask about that at the time, but I forgot. Did that actually happen?

"Heart lesions", also known as they couldn't find the bleeding thing. He'll be a good fit in the Saudi league, maybe he can play against our lot.

Juve are buying Vlahovic, how much more money do they have to spend? And Arsenal have money to spend but can't seem to decide on who they actually want to buy.

He (Guimaeres) was linked heavily with other sides, I didn't know we were interested. Has the journo got a good track record? Any interest in Adama Traore? The prices being quoted are quite low, we could do worse for around 20m. I do question whether Wolves would sell to us.

GET THE FUCK IN!

Dennis got the red too, salt in the wound for Watford.

If he hadn't we wouldn't be propping up the Premier League.

Algeria 0-0 Sierra Leone: Algeria huffed and puffed to little effect, easily repelled by a lad who'd probably never even seen Africa before this tournament. When you look at the millions of pounds of talent in the Desert Foxes' side this has to go down as a very disappointing result. Slimani looked every inch the carthorse who played for us, Mahrez was mostly anonymous, and Brahimi missed a gilt-edged chance. As you can guess I'm absolutely torn up that the 2019 winners and tournament favorites, blah blah blah, couldn't get out of the blocks. Nigeria A-A Egypt: This match was cancelled due to lack of interest (from the Egypt players.) Sudan 0-0 Guinea-Bissau: Another tepid match. Guinea-Bissau may not have many household names but their squad is full of players with experience across the lesser lights of European leagues, and they'd have expected to win. Sudan were just happy to be here after a recent thrashing. GB had the chance to win but Pele (no relation, clearly ) ballsed up his penalty after an atrocious run-up, then three GB players contrived to miss follow-up opportunities. If Pele had been playing for the school side I coach, and took a penalty like that, he'd have had the bollocking of his life and for a full international to fuck around like that was a big embarrassment, especially as this is the only match GB will be expected to win. Overall I have to be brutally honest and state none of these teams have lit the tournament up so far. Not a single match so far has featured more than one goal and most have been dry as the Sahara. The spirit-sapping conditions (more than 80% humidity) in Cameroon, plus COVID, aren't helping, but this is not exactly a feast of football. Morocco have impressed me the most so far. Maybe Cote d'Ivoire can announce themselves tomorrow against Equatorial Guinea, another side just happy to be present. That's all from Slapheed Makemba, your 2016 Yaounde Mirror Group Sports Writer of the Year and African footy correspondent. Laterz, lol.

By the way that was a completely impartial assessment of Algeria's chances of winning the cup, as you know I would never allow myself to be affected by any sort of bias.

Done a good job of keeping former NUFC donkey Slimani at bay. This mickey mouse Algeria side was bigged up as one of the favorites. Must be having a laugh. The mysterious cabal of Algiers-based businessmen has obviously been influencing the algedia.

Cameroon 2-1 Burkina Faso: Engaging match between the hosts and a decent BF side. Comedy defending gifted two penalties to Cameroon, without which they might not have scored. BF had scored the opener after Cameroon's keeper flapped at a simple cross. Not doing the stereotypes of African keepers any favors. Aboubakar is a good striker with a solid scoring record wherever he's been, but for whatever reason, he moved to the $audi league this $ea$on, can't imagine why. Ethiopia 0-1 Cape Verde: Dire match between probably the second and third worst teams in the competition, played in front of a 90% or more empty stadium. Ethiopia received a red on 10 minutes and offered literally nothing from that point on. Cape Verde for their part labored to get the ball in the box and failed to take advantage of a few 2-on-1s that should've resulted in goals. If I were Burkina Faso I would definitely fancy my chances against either of these sides.