Angolan striker, Cristovao Paciencia rescued a vital point for his side after converting from the spot to hold Algeria to a 1-1 stalemate at Bouake’s Stade De La Paix in their TotalEnergies CAF Africa Cup of Nations Cote d’Ivoire 2023 Group C opener against the former champions on Monday evening.
The 2019 champions came into the tie as favourites on paper and unsurprisingly pinned their opponents into their own half from the opening whistle.
Fares Chaibi was the first to ask questions of Adilson Cipriano in as early as the 6th minute after doing well to connect with a Youcef Belaili cross for his volleyed effort to go narrowly wide.
Belaili, who was a constant threat to the Angolan defense almost opened the scoring charts in the eighth minute after doing well to cut in from the left to unleash a powerful strike that was fisted away by Cipriano.
The Desert Foxes were eventually rewarded for their relentless attacks after a lobbed ball from the back went over Kialonda Gaspar for 2019 title hero, Baghdad Bounedjah to comfortably slot it into the bottom left corner.
Interestingly Bounedjah scored Algeria’s opening goal in their first match of the 2019 edition against Kenya, where they went on to win the title Egypt.
Coming back from the recess, Angola’s game plan was to get balls into the danger area – a tactic that paid dividends in the 68th minute when substitute, Cristovao Paciencia converted from the spot kick after he was fouled in the box by Nabil Bentaleb.
The evenly contested encounter concluded with both sides sharing the spoils in front of a highly vocal Stade De La Paix crowd.
Next for Algeria will be a clash against Burkina Faso on Saturday at 14h00, while Angola face Mauritania in the 20h00 Kick Off.
POST MATCH FACTS:
● Algeria have not won any of their last four Africa Cup of Nations matches (D2 L2), having won six of the previous seven (D1).
● Algeria have not lost any of their last five opening matches at the Africa Cup of Nations (W2 D3), their longest run since 1980-1990, when they went unbeaten in six such games (W3 D3).
● Angola have not won any of their last nine matches in the Africa Cup of Nations (D5 L4) – only Benin (11) and Guinea-Bissau (10) are on a longer run.
● Angola are unbeaten in their last six Africa Cup of Nations opening matches (W1 5D). The last time they lost their first match of an edition of the AFCON was in 2006 (1-3 against Cameroon).
● Since 2019, no player has scored more goals for Algeria at the Africa Cup of Nations than Baghdad Bounedjah (3). He scored Algeria’s first goal in two of the last three editions, after the one scored against Kenya in June 2019 (2-0).
● Four of the last 12 goals conceded by Algeria at the Africa Cup of Nations have been from penalties, while none of the previous 15 goals conceded by the Fenecs in the competition had been in this way.
● Angola scored their fourth penalty at the Africa Cup of Nations since 2010 – only Ghana have scored more (8). In the same time, Algeria have conceded five – only Mali have conceded more (7).
Credit: CAF
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