After covering the knockout stages of what was arguably one of the best football tournaments of all time in the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations, Soccer Laduma journalist Kamogelo Motecwane has returned to South Africa to give us his thoughts on the football that was on the show in the Ivory Coast in a three-part series. Here is part three!
Check Out: My Amazing Trip To The AFCON In Ivory Coast – Part 1
After watching Ivory Coast's impressive win of DR Congo live at the Stade Olympique Alassane Outtara D'Ebimpe and all the intense media activities that came thereafter, I now had two more games to prepare for. The "losers" final between South Africa and the Leopards, as well as the final at the aforementioned arena.
The game between Bafana Bafana and DR Congo was uneventful. After seeing the first 15 minutes of Hugo Broos' training session the day before, I expected a much-changed side, but in fact there were very little, while their opponents rested almost the entirety of the starting XI that had got them to this point.
The match was played at the Stade Felix Houphouet-Boigny and because it was situated on the banks of a lagoon, the humidity was at an all-time high. Perhaps partly because of the conditions, I witnessed a rather lacklustre performance, arguably South Africa's worst at the showpiece as the opposition created chance after chance. However, they were wasteful and eventually the game went to penalties. Although Ronwen Williams was unable to pull off his Cape Verde heroics against Nigeria in the semis, he was back to his shot-stopping best against Sebastien Desabre's side as he saved the final two penalties to lead his side to their first third-place finish in 24 years.
While the third-place match might have been relatively calm, the day of the final was the complete antithesis of that. The match kicked off at 20:00, so I knew I had to already be on my way to the stadium at least by 14:00 just because I had been experiencing Abidjan traffic on a day-to-day basis and leaving anything later would be a disservice. Myself and the rest of the journalists left the media centre around that time, but what was supposed to be a 45-minute trip ended up being three hours.
Not only were the streets of the city flooded with cars, but there was also an ocean of orange and white jersey's waiting to see their country win their third African title. As we're driving past all these people making their way to their respective venues to watch their country, we encounter more traffic about one kilometre from the stadium. Impatiently sitting in the bus, with the stadium in sight, I decided to walk, but it was at the stadium I encountered more issues.
I arrived at the stadium two hours before kick-off; how it worked for media that wanted to be present for matches was that you had to apply on CAF's media channel in order to get a media ticket for any particular game you wanted to cover.
So I had applied days before and obviously I went to the game because I had been approved, but upon my arrival to collect my media ticket, the volunteers responsible for issuing these passes told me, as well as other media personnel present, that there were no tickets available. CAF had managed to be logistically sound up until that point because I had to fight for two and a half hours to get a ticket that was already approved.
As a consequence, I missed the first 30 minutes of the final and only entered the media tribune just as William Troost-Ekong opened the scoring, but once I got over being angry at the poor planning around media access, I began to enjoy what was once again a raucous Ivorian crowd. Even after going down a goal, the fans were still singing and getting behind their team. Emerse Fae's charges were creating chances, and just when you thought that Stanley Nwabali would not be beaten on the night, Franck Kessie managed to find the back of the net.
Ola Aina had been one of the best performers at the 2023 AFCON, but every time Simon Adingra got the ball and faced him up, he seemed unsure of how to contain him and eventually it was the Brighton Hove Albion man who created the assist for Sebastien Haller to net the winner that ultimately saw Ivory Coast earn their third star.
Check Out: My Amazing Trip To The AFCON In Ivory Coast – Part 2
Overall, it was an awesome experience being in west Africa for the first time, and the football and match experiences that I had exceeded any expectations I had for them. The 2023 Africa Cup of Nations was the stuff of dreams.
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