Have you ever seen an elephant trying to walk through the mud? Well, you could have seen something like that at the Japoma Stadium in Douala on Wednesday night. The Elephants followed that old principle of “score a goal early, then annoy your fans for 90 minutes”. What do you mean, it’s not a principle? Oh, alright then. But that is exactly what the AFCON favourites have done in their Group F game against Equatorial Guinea.Ivory Coast captain Max Gradel gave his team the lead with a masterfully-taken strike early on. At that point, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the star-studded Ivorian side would proceed to hammer their opponents in Douala. But you would have been wrong.GOAL! IVORY COAST!Max Gradel at 34 opens the Elephant’s #AFCON2021 in style.Ivory Coast 🇨🇮 1-0 🇬🇶 Equatorial Guineapic.twitter.com/0NsmGscoYq— African Insider #AFCON2021 🏆 (@African_Insider) January 12, 2022 After 20 or so minutes, the minnows from Equatorial Guinea started to push forward with more confidence. They simply realized that despite all the big names on the back of Ivorian white kits, this match wasn’t beyond the National Thunder.Dorian Hanza’s had a fine attempt that was blocked by Manchester United’s Eric Bailly on the half-hour mark. It was only a taste of what was to come.The red-clad Thunder were more than equal to the Elephants and on a couple of occasions they just needed a bit of concentration. As for bravery, determination and passion, they were easily the better team.Maxwel Cornet, the Burnley winger, was probably the best player for Patrice Beaumelle’s side, but that really isn’t saying much. The favourites had a formidable lineup with Franck Kessie, Sebastien Haller, Jean-Michael Seri and Ghislain Konan, but they rarely looked like producing something significant.Ivory Coast edge past Equatorial Guinea 1-0 in a scrappy game that was a poor advert for African football.Too many 1-0 scorelines at #AFCON2021Are teams being too conservative in the knowledge they can still make it to Round of 16 with a 3rd place group finish? Boring 🙃.— Warothe Kiru (@warothe) January 12, 2022 Arsenal misfit Nicolas Pepe and Crystal Palace winger Wilfried Zaha came on in the latter stages of the game but it’s safe to say that they didn’t improve their rating among the Ivorian fans back home. Their body language didn’t look encouraging at all and it was Pepe who blasted way over from the edge of the box in one of the Elephants’ rare promising moves.The final whistle came to the relief of the Ivorians, leaving the National Thunder to rue their chances and wonder what it would be like if they managed to at least snatch a point.AFRICA CUP OF NATIONSGroup ETuesdayAlgeria – Sierra Leone 0-0WednesdayEquatorial Guinea – Ivory Coast 0-1 (0-1)/Gradel 5/
