PNA shock! African champion over the precipice. 35 matches and a brutal end

Esteban Obiang’s goal in the 70th minute of the Algeria – Equatorial Guinea match (0: 1) put the African champions on the edge. In Cameroon, the defending Algerians scored only one point in two games against Sierra Leone and Equatorial Guinea and did not score a single goal.

This is despite the fact that there are many stars of African football in the Algerian team. Ismael Bennacer, Sofiane Feghouli, Said Benrahma and Yacine Brahimi are just some of them. Now, however, to advance to the 1/8 finals, Algeria will have to beat Côte d’Ivoire (Thursday 17:00) in their last game, and the African champions cannot be optimistic after their first two matches.

Algeria’s eye-catching series has been discontinued. But how many matches is she?

The 0: 1 defeat with Equatorial Guinea also interrupted Algeria’s spectacular series without defeat. According to the Algerians, it was as many as 35 matches. then only two matches would be missing.

Interestingly, Algeria does not include the winning FIFA Arab Cup tournament, which took place at the turn of November and December, in this balance sheet. The Algerians scored four wins and two draws in it, which gives six consecutive matches without a defeat. However, they do not want to count it themselves, because for this tournament, which did not take place on the official FIFA date, the teams were sending squads without their strongest players who stayed in their clubs.

However, these calculations of the Algerians do not matter, because, according to the Sporting News portal, the world federation counted Algeria only 25 games without a defeat. Where does such a difference come from? All because the Algerians in their calculations do not take into account the loss with 0: 3 in October 2019 in the qualifying round of the African Nations Championship.

These games, like the FIFA Arab Cup, were played without the best African players, but since the national teams were competing against each other, FIFA does not intend to divide official matches for better and worse. The defeat of Equatorial Guinea, however, made it all less important.

In the table of group D of the African Cup of Nations, Côte d’Ivoire (4 points) leads two rounds ahead of Equatorial Guinea (3) and Sierra Leone (2). Algeria is the last one with one point. The two best teams from each group and four from six out of three places will advance to the 1/8 finals, but it is almost certain that a minimum of three points will be needed to advance from the third position, so Algeria has to win against WKS on Thursday afternoon.