Ivory Coast’s Plateau district of Abidjan is undulating like San Francisco, but its peeling, sun-bleached towers and water connection might make you think you’re on Havana’s boardwalk.
There is also brutalist architecture and five-star hotels. It is the city’s business district and is home to each of the eight teams competing in AFCON Group A and B.
On Sunday morning at the Pullman, the hotel Nigeria and Ghana share, the mood was surprisingly upbeat.
Both nations are under immense pressure and some commentators from the continent claim that it would not surprise them if they bow out of the tournament before the knockout stages.
Nigeria have some of the best centre-forwards on the planet, but there is a lack of partnership further back.
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Some of the players believe that Portuguese coach Jose Peseiro is too capricious and thinks too much about his plans, instead of just letting the team play.
Meanwhile, confidence in Ghana has never been so low. The country’s association has been accused of failing to build an infrastructure that produces the quality it once had and it has been suggested that Ghana’s hopes rest solely on the production of West Ham United striker Mohamed Quds.
Later in the evening, sources in Ghana reported that manager Chris Hughton was attacked in Pullman after the country’s defeat to Cape Verde. Allegedly, only the intervention of government diplomats prevented the situation from ending badly.
Many of the rooms at the Pullman overlook Abidjan’s Ebrie Lagoon, where seaweed and mangroves shimmer at sunset.
Maybe that helped release some tension earlier in the day before kicking a ball. As the Nigerians kicked off for a tie with Equatorial Guinea (who stay at the Movenpick just around the corner) in stifling afternoon humidity, they were to the beat of African beats, with captain Ahmed Musa running a playlist from his own boombox.
The security operation at where Egypt’s national team was staying, a 10-minute walk away, was tighter, with the road in front of the Tiama Hotel closed to traffic by national police while local gendarmerie patrolled inside. with hotel staff insisting on ID from anyone who wanted to take the lift to the higher floors.
The atmosphere was not as relaxed as it might otherwise be. There was an obvious reason for this caution. Across the Boulevard de la Republique is the renovated Felix Houphouet Boigny Stadium, where a few hours later, Egypt entered the match with a disappointing 2-2 draw against Mozambique, secured only in injury time after a controversial penalty kick by Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah.
clarifying, The Athlete He wasn’t meant to be here, sitting in the lobby as the Egyptian players gathered four hours before kick-off, playing foosball.
Salah was slightly sidelined by that fun as he waited to retire to the dining room at the accompanying Restaurant l’Ambassadeur for a 20-minute squad meeting organized by another Portuguese coach, Rui Vitoria.
Salah is clearly the leader of this group, signaling to his teammates, in his shower slippers, that it’s time to move on as 1pm arrives.
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Twenty-four hours earlier, he was absent from the pre-match press conference at the Palais de la Culture across the lagoon in Treichville, where Vitoria fielded long, impressive answers to questions — about 80% of which related in some way to Salah, team captain (and the country’s first global superstar).
Egypt is one of those jobs where it can be beneficial to meet expectations by raising them. “The whole team has only one goal,” Vitoria admitted on Saturday. “Let’s be crowned champions.”
If that happens, it will arguably have greater historical implications for Salah than for the country he represents. While Egypt have seven AFCON titles, the most in the competition’s history, the three most recent (2006, 2008 and 2010) were won immediately before Salah’s international career took off in 2011.
This means that he has inherited an expectation that he had nothing to do with. With Salah a two-time losing finalist (2017, 2021), the AFCON remains the only major hole in his glittering CV.
Although Salah is often considered the best player in Egyptian history, Mohamed Aboutrika is considered the best. Not only was he the creative architect of two AFCON titles, he transcended football because of his social conscience and political views during a period of immense turmoil in Egypt.
Salah is not regarded in the same way because he has played almost his entire career in Europe, at a time when fans across Egypt have been locked out of stadiums for more than a decade due to the hangover from the Arab Spring, increasing. the distance in general between the football players and those watching it.
Egyptians were more likely to see Salah on a billboard than on a pitch. he is the first Egyptian footballer to become a corporate machine, attracting fans beyond the borders of his place of origin.
Although his goals would lead Egypt to only their third World Cup appearance in 2018, the AFCON may hold more significance for the country because it is a tournament that Egypt can win and has won so many times.
Would handing over that trophy change the way people feel about him? Winners tend to be able to define how they are remembered. However, the failure to win the AFCON did not hinder the fame of legends such as Didier Drogba and George Weah, who – it must be emphasized – represent something more given Drogba’s commitment to ending a civil war and Weah’s foray into politics where has become the President of Liberia.
Equally interesting, but largely unspoken is how the rest of Africa feels about Salah, a player whose political actions are treated far more subtly.
Elsewhere on the Plateau, below its southernmost tip, is the local mosque and, on a Sunday morning, it was particularly quiet. This is not an area where many Abidjani live, but a few were around.
When asked which African player he liked best, one man described Nigeria’s Victor Oshimen as the “King of the continent”. He was a Christian, but a Muslim in a garage forecourt filling up his car said there was only one answer. “Sallah,” he said simply.
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Westerners tend to forget the vastness of Africa and all the cultural alignments that exist here, including race. There is a huge issue of Egyptian identity, as it is sometimes suggested that it is Arab by culture but African by geography.
African critics suggest that Egyptian governments have not always shown that the area below it on the map is a priority, while Sudan, just to the south, has more of a foothold in Africa, bridging the gap with greater enthusiasm and confidence.
Although a new development of the Nile dam has led to increased cooperation with Ethiopia, Mirette Mabrouk of the Middle East Institute suggested in 2021 that there is some distance to go if Egypt is to convince the rest of Africa that it is not only interested in seen as an entry point into the region when it benefits its own economic interests.
“You cannot be seen as a gateway to a continent that you are not fully a part of, fully committed to, and fully involved in,” he argued.
Cairo’s billboards may feature Salah exclusively, but the dominant faces in Abidjan are Frank Kessy and Sébastien Haller.
It certainly didn’t feel like the country was waiting for Salah to land, although his name was cheered louder before the game against Mozambique when the squads were read out.
It is difficult to know which nationalities reacted this way because Abidjan is home to people from all over West Africa.
The mood would change, however, as the game wore on and, with a shocker on the cards, the crowd chanted for “MOZAMBIKA! MOZAMBIQUE! MOZAMBIQUE!”
When Egypt were awarded their penalty following a VAR decision by the Moorish referee, there was fury and as Salah took the next chance off the post and in, there were laughs.
This was not the result anyone watching would have expected given Mozambique had only appeared in one previous AFCON in the last 25 years.
However, Salah will certainly take confidence from Lionel Messi’s experience at the last World Cup, when Argentina suffered an even greater humiliation in the opening game against Saudi Arabia before winning on aggregate.
Despite the fact that Messi was one of the best footballers in the history of the sport, future discussions about him would be different if Argentina did not react positively to this result.
Salah is struggling to avoid the same reservations.
(Top photo: Fareed Kotb/Anadolu via Getty Images)