TOPS
At 20 years old, Lamine Camara had a big match against Gambia (3-0) for his very first in a CAN. The young midfielder had only 8 caps before this match against Gambia, and it didn’t show at all! With strong projection, he was an essential piece in the development of the game requested by Aliou Cissé. And obviously, he left his mark with his two superb goals, different in style but similar in intention, that of bringing more numbers to the Senegalese offensives. Returning from the locker room, Ismaila Sarr sees her colleague’s departure at full speed and alerts him in the depth, launched, the Metz player delivers a strong strike to the ground that is unstoppable. It was already remarkable but he had to amaze us again at the end of the match. It was another Marseillais who did the job to serve as the man of the match, after a series of dribbles Ndiaye passed the ball at the entrance to the area, and the rest speaks for itself.
He too was taking his first steps in a major international competition, and he too did well. The Senegal squad is strong and has a good base as African champions in 2022, but the newcomers are joining in particularly well. this team of champions. Niakhate is one of them and demonstrated all his qualities alongside the very experienced Kalidou Koulibay. The Gambian attackers did not lack pace and were even relevant on several occasions, unfortunately for them they came across a Niakhaté in form and imperial in the management of depth. If we highlight the performance of the Nottingham defender, we must also salute those of his captain Koulibaly, and Edouard Mendy, authors of some great saves. This defensive trio worked well and brought back the clean sheet, and could continue like this for the rest of the tournament, provided that Niakhaté is not seriously injured, he who received a blow and had to give up his place in the 81st minute game.
FLOPS
It could have gone unnoticed, given that the Cardiff player received his red card when the match signal was cut, but beIN SPORTS published a video of his foul just seconds from the end of the first half. On this video, while there is clearly no fire, we see Adams rushing at Lamine Camara before giving him a nasty foul behind the ankle, an avoidable gesture which made life difficult for his teammates. While the players were going to be sent back to the locker room, the Scorpions midfielder could have largely refrained from this gesture which cut off the momentum of a Gambia which achieved great things in the first half.
The television broadcast of the first match of Group C of the African Cup of Nations was cut Monday on all broadcast channels, for around fifteen minutes, AFP noted. On the New Ivorian Channel (NCI), which broadcasts all the matches of the competition, a banner indicated “interruption of the match signal on all African channels”. On BeIn Sports, which broadcasts the competition in France, another banner specified that “technical problems” were preventing the broadcast of the match. The broadcast resumed at the start of the second half. The signal cut off around the 30th minute while defending champion Senegal led 1-0 against Gambia in Yamoussoukro. Later we learned that it was the fault of a storm in Empimbé which cut the signal, for broadcasters around the world. Fortunately for viewers, no goals were scored during this cut.
