Time for another fearless ACN prediction…

What would a major international football tournament be without predictions? We as fans get a chance to have our say about who will be the best when all is said and done. We have nothing to lose in making predictions because if we are right we can claim expertise and extra-special knowledge about the teams and the competition and trumpet our brilliant foresight for all to hear. If we happen to be wrong no one will remember anyways and we of course will be sure let our incorrect guesses slip into obscurity. So now it’s prime time for predictions to abound and since Togo has not qualified for this edition of the ACN and we need not talk about the team, let’s have a prediction. Not mine though, let’s hear from someone much more connected with African football who you would think would have a pretty good idea of what we should expect in the next few weeks.

Stephen Keshi is once again the coach of the Togolese national team. He is actually Nigerian and was on the last Nigerian team to win the ACN back in 1994. It’s his prediction we’ll take a look at today. After all, you’d much rather read his then mine, right?

Keshi being Nigerian and a member of a team that previously won the tournament for his home country you would expect him to pick his beloved Super Eagles to win it all…right? Not so much.

In a telephone radio interview a few weeks ago from Togo, Keshi laid out how he thinks everything will go down in Ghana. You can read the full article here but I will break it down for you if you want to keep reading.

Who is it that gets Keshi’s vote? Like many other’s he predicts the Elephants of Cote d’Ivoire to come out on top. He says the Elephants are “world-class” and currently “the best team on the continent”. But the article gets more interesting when he discusses the teams that he thinks will not be the strongest in Ghana.

First he takes a little poke at the host nation by claiming the Black Stars are an “ordinary” and “average” side. He goes on to say, “We played against them at the Four-Nation tournament in Accra and by my own assessment there was nothing special about the Black Stars. Although they won the trophy by beating the Squirrels of Benin Republic, I don’t think they have a team that can rule the continent.” It’s a good thing that Togo is not in this tournament because that kind of statement is what we refer to in North America as “bulletin board material” and extra motivation for the slighted team to make the person eat their words.

Next the Togo boss talked a little about his country of birth and their chances. Needless to say, he doesn’t have a lot of confidence in the current Nigerian national team. He went so far as to say that it would be the “the ninth wonder of the world” if the Super Eagles were able to come out on top in Ghana this year. Nice. The meat on the bones of that statement is that Keshi believes that Nigeria is made up of a bunch of individually talented players but not necessarily a team. “We have quality players, but we lack the kind of cohesiveness required to excel. Many of our players are doing very well in Europe for their clubs, but for us to win in Ghana we need a team, a group of players, who are united, disciplined and ready to give their best - and I don’t think we have that now.” Naturally the idea of comparing this edition of the Nigerian team with the last one to win the African championship in 1994 of which Keshi was a member was addressed. He summed it all up in this statement: “I’m sure Nigerians know that we cannot compare this team to our team that won the tournament in 1994. In terms of quality, discipline, commitment and hunger for glory, there is no basis for comparison.”

So, as you can see, what’s interesting about Stephen Keshi’s prediction is not who he thinks will win but who he is picking to lose. In a few weeks we’ll know just how much Keshi knows about the current state of the best teams Africa has to offer.

That being said, the Togo blog is now going to take a little hiatus as focus is solely on the Cup of Nations now and other opportunities have presented themselves to take up my time. More on that soon.

As a sidebar here’s an interesting video I stumbled on about Zambia in the aforementioned ‘94 Cup of Nations and their dramatic journey to the final where they eventually lost to Keshi’s Nigerian squad. And don’t be confused towards the end of the video when they show the highlights of the championship game, the team in green is actually Zambia and the team wearing the pajama’s is Nigeria. Gotta love the kits of the 90’s.