Afcon: the story so far. And Mourinho sacked by Roma – Football Weekly

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Hello, and welcome to the Guardian Football Weekly.

It's an AFCON special.

We haven't had time to do a preview, so consider this the preview just after the tournament has started, which means we get to discuss a number of upsets: zero wins from their opening matches for Egypt, Cameroon, Tunisia, Ghana, and Nigeria.

With Ghana beaten by Cape Verde and Tunisia losing to Namibia, their first ever AFCON win of the favourite.

Senegal have started imperiously, while World Cup semi-finalists Morocco might be playing as you listen along to this.

We'll discuss whether we'll see more fans in the Côte d'Ivoire than previous tournaments, and whether CAF president Patrick Matzepe is under any pressure to deliver a more successful one than last time out in Cameroon.

There's some any other business.

Jose Sachs, Jordan Henderson leaving Saudi Arabia, Bristol's FA Cup win, and another football weekly dream.

All that plus your questions.

And that's today's Guardian Football Weekly.

On the panel today from Pulse Sports in Nigeria, Solis Chukwu, who we've spoken to before.

Hi, Solis.

How are you?

I'm very well.

Thank you, Max.

Thanks for coming on.

Writing for The Guardian for AFCON, amongst others, Asasu Obayuana.

Asasu, thanks for coming on.

Hello, Max.

Nice to see you.

Nice to have you.

And Jonathan Wilson, veteran of AFCON, who will be going out to cover the knockouts.

I mean, veterans suggest you've played in many tournaments.

You haven't.

Let's be clear about that.

But you have covered a lot of them.

I've covered.

This will be my 11th.

Yeah.

So.

Your 11th.

Yeah.

Good man.

All right.

Well, look, for those of you who don't follow AFCON religiously, this tournament, 24 teams, six groups of four in each group.

Top two teams go through to the last 16.

The four best third-place teams make it to the last 16 as well.

We've almost finished the first round of games.

Tom says, why do you think there have been so many shock results?

Joe says, given that the big teams, Senegal and Morocco, are imperfect and a tad defensive, Nigeria, Algeria, Cameroon, all fallible.

Côte d'Ivoire fragile defensively.

Is AFCON the most open and competitive international competition?

The shock results, Asarsu,

what do you put that down to?

What are the shock results for you first?

So I can talk about them.

Well, that's a good question.

I suppose from our point of view, and maybe I'm just speaking for myself, we see the sides, like the historically big Africa sides

that I've mentioned in the intro, I guess, you know, as the ones that we expect to do well every time.

And obviously, international football changes, doesn't it?

But it was a surprise for me to see Tunisia lose to Namibia, and it was certainly a surprise to see Ghana beaten by Cape Verde.

Well, the Ghana loss to Cape Verde wasn't a surprise to me at all.

As Jonathan would testify, the Black Stars have been in a rather bad shape for a couple of years now.

And the signs came to the fore in Cameroon when they crashed out in the first round and lost their very last game to the Comoros, which is a comparable side to Cape Verde.

And they've just basically picked up from their miserable performance in Cameroon to continue it here

in Abidjan.

So, for people in Ghana, they're not particularly surprised with the results because they've observed that the team has been in rather poor form.

The team has not been stable in terms of

managers for the last couple of years.

I think between 2021 and now they've had four managers, four.

They had the former Ghana International CK Akuno.

Then before the Afcorn in Cameroon, Ratomir,

sorry, I'm just forgetting his name now.

The coach that took them to the 2010 World Cup finals in South Africa

yes Milo van Rajevac thank you he came back for a second stint which was disastrous and they sacked him as soon as the AFCON was over and then Otto Addo took over for the World Cup but as soon as the World Cup was done he just decided he'd had enough and now we have Chris Hugon in charge and this is his first time of him being an international manager and he is not having a very good time with the Black Stars.

There's been so much pressure on him for the period he's been in Ghana.

In fact, a lot of people thought that he was going to be sacked before the tournament.

So you can imagine the reaction to losing to Cape Verde.

I mean, one fan almost came to blows with him at the hotel after the game.

The police had to be called in to take him away.

So that's the situation with regards to Ghana.

Tunisia,

they have not had it very well

in the last couple of years as well.

There's been a lot of governance instability at the Federation, and it's been showing with the national team as well.

But yes, to lose to Namibia that have never won an African Cup of Nations game until now, it's very humiliating.

And I'm sure the coach knows that if he doesn't fix things very quickly, he'll be out.

Solis, that winning goal for Namibia was a great moment for them.

Yes, it was.

I had a lot of fun watching Namibia play against Tunisia.

I'll be honest, I'm not exactly unbiased here.

I'm very biased towards good football, and Tunisia do not have a tradition of providing it.

They are perennially terrible to watch.

So,

watching the first half and seeing them sit so deep against Namibia, it was just like I kept praying, let them get what they deserve for this because this was so unambitious.

The second half, they sort of came into it more,

but Namibia showed a lot of fight, showed a lot of heart.

And crucially, the quality that was needed in that moment to deliver that cross-fantastic.

And Horto got his head onto that.

And it's a really, really famous win for Namibia.

Hopefully, they push on from this, but,

you know, it's a tough group.

On paper, Tunisia was the hardest game for them, and they've gotten the result there, but you know, you never know with Afghan.

So

the celebrations in Bindhock Bindhock hopefully will

go on all the way through the tournament, no matter what happens.

In Cape Verde and Ghana's group, Wilson, Egypt drew 2-2 with Mozambique, and Mozambique actually went ahead in this game.

And Egypt needed a last-minute penalty from Moz Salah.

They've lost two of the last three finals, and you sort of feel with Egypt.

I don't know, is this the last is this maybe the penultimate one with Salah at the peak of his powers, or maybe even the last one?

He'll be 33 next time out.

Yeah, probably the penultimate one.

I mean, I know they got to the final two years ago, but they weren't good two years ago.

It was very much, they defended, they scrapped, they spoiled.

Salah was massively isolated.

They were really bad to watch in last summer.

They sort of scraped their way to the final, largely on mentality because

their record is so good and they do tend to get through.

So

this felt like a continuation of that, except without the defensive solidity.

The Callas Kieros is gone, but his legacy remains.

I think there is a sense that Salah's.

I know Egyptian fans tend to blame Salah for this.

He's never really done it for Egypt, but I just think the way the team's set up is so boring and it's so reliant on him that he becomes quite easy to defend against.

Who's more boring, Egypt or Tunisia?

Oh, Tunisia, definitely.

But carry on.

Egypt, of all the countries in the North African region, is the one country that have a culture of being able to win an African Cup of Nations anywhere on the continent you play, north, west, east, or south.

So, for me, I'm never surprised when Egypt starts badly,

but I know that they have a level of professionalism that enables them to dig in and get the results when they need to get the results.

I mean, for me, the most interesting thing is to see whether their head coach Rui Vittoria is going to justify his salary.

Because Rui Vittoria, if he's not the best paid coach in African football at the moment, he's definitely among the top two or three because he's on a salary of 200,000 US dollars a month, which gives him a salary of 2.4 million dollars a year.

Compare that to the coach of Nigeria who is getting only 50,000.

So if he doesn't deliver a good result for the pharaohs at this WAFCON, there will be a lot of questions for him to answer.

I mean, I was in Egypt for five weeks just before the tournament, and I watched Egypt play against Djibouti in their World Cup qualifier in Cairo, where they gave Djibouti a 6-0 trouncing.

But I mean, that's Djibouti, and you would expect that they should dominate a game against a less inferior opponent.

But here at the AFCON, it's not so easy, and they will really have to step up.

Mozambique has given them the warning that

you know there are not going to be any easy pies for offering here.

You mentioned Nigeria there, Sonas, you're in Lagos.

A one-all draw with Equatorial Guinea.

How's that gone down?

Well, people are massively disappointed.

Everyone is up in arms.

It's important to note that Nigeria, in spite of all their riches, especially in attack, they went to this tournament under a massive cloud of pessimism back home.

People aren't convinced by the work that the coach was in Pesero is doing.

So everyone was sort of hoping for a bit more fluidity now that, you know, you have the team in a tournament setting, you know, a large block of training to get the team ready.

But still, what we got for the most part was

Nigeria created a lot of chances.

And that's really the thing.

The squad has the quality to overcome some of the tactical deficiencies, you know, within it.

But in terms of how the team actually plays, how they set up to create chances, there's very little repeatability to it.

And so because of that, even though Nigeria created a whole host of chances and really could have won on another day, people are a lot more down on the team after that result.

But personally, I think Nigeria probably will be fine.

Makatora, Guinea and Nukushova, they got to the last

eight the last time around.

So this is not by any means an easy team to dispatch.

So I just think that if Nigeria continues in this game, they can create problems for pretty much anyone.

It really will come down to how clinical they are and of course how much they can trouble the more established sides when they if they progress deep forward solace i have to say that you're you're you're very optimistic

because for them for them to to to to get to the second round they have to beat i mean if they want to be sure of going to the second round they need to beat corde d'Ivoire on thursday because if if they get another draw against Court d'Ivoire, it's going to leave things really on the edge.

I just think the fact that, you know, with the format of the tournament, the fact that third-place teams can go through, I think that gives a lot of leeway, to be honest.

Yeah, but Nigeria is not a team that should be waiting for,

you know, whether they're going to get a third place.

Come on.

I mean,

they're supposed to qualify automatically.

Ideally, it shouldn't be that way, but stranger things have happened.

This is tournament football.

I mean, I think back to Euro 2016 and Portugal just going all the way to win the tournament, and they just drew their way through the competition, basically.

So it's tournament football, anything can happen.

As for what's ideal, yeah, Nigeria really should be doing a lot better than they're doing.

They should be winning the group, probably.

I mean, Cote d'Ivoire are really good signs, they're the hosts, but you know, their game against Guinea-Saud, there were a couple of inefficiencies in terms of how they play.

So, ideally, Nigeria should be coming out of this group really nervously.

But the reality, yeah,

reality does not always line up with expectations yeah but what what what i'm what i'm really interested to see with nigeria is how they will react when they are under real pressure because equatorial guinea is not a top team you know in in the continent so in terms of the pressure tactically it wasn't so much but when they're going to be playing against you know higher quality sites that's when they're going to have to show whether they have the the invention the fluidity to actually dig out a result.

And that's why I'm really keen to see how they do against Court d'Ivoire because if they're able to step up in that game, then maybe there's hope.

As somebody pointed out to me, I mean, when I covered the World Cup in France in 1998, France won the World Cup without having a top strike.

I mean, Stéphane Cuivas was supposed to be their key man, but he didn't deliver.

So they had to find a way of winning the World Cup round him.

So I guess, yes, the lack of balance for Nigeria is definitely a problem because the midfield doesn't have the creativity of an Okocha, it doesn't have the defensive maturity of a Sunday Olisa there.

But

I guess

if you have lemons, you have to make lemonade.

So, let's see what Jose Pesero does with what he's got.

I mean, funnily enough, funnily enough, Max, I just want to say one more thing before

you move me on.

You say one more thing.

It may be two, but carry on.

At the end of the press conference, Jose Pesero said that

sometimes in football, God gives and God takes, and that he hopes that God will

give him something on the match day on Thursday.

He better because

if God doesn't give him anything, I'm sure he's going to be hearing a lot from people in Nigeria.

I'm really enjoying Wilson struggling to get a word in Edgeways.

This is an absolute joy.

Yeah, Wilson.

Wait, I'm slightly nervous to do this.

I was going to ask a question.

Can somebody explain Jose Pesero or Joseph Pissero to me?

Because he was floating around two years ago in the background, and Augustin Agriva was sort of a caretaker coach or something because they hadn't sorted out Pesero's contract.

And Pissero is a joker, right?

He took sporting to the final of the UEFA Cup in 2005.

And since then, he's had 13 jobs, hasn't lasted more than 50 games in any of them.

And

this is such a major question.

This is genuinely true.

I was in Stamford in Lincolnshire, I think it is.

This beautiful old Georgian town.

And I got off the train.

This is sort of 18 months ago.

And somebody recognizes me and comes up to me and says, Can you explain to me what's going on with Joseph Pissero?

And

my only answer was,

oh, it'll be some mad scheme of Amadou Pinnock.

Is that all it is?

Or what's going on with Pesero?

Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy.

Look, you know,

if I go back to December 21.

Can I just check?

Can I just check this last year?

When you start a sentence with, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, does that mean a short or a long?

I'm expecting a long story.

I mean, my reaction is just a reflection of how ridiculous the situation is.

Look, when

Nigeria sacked Gernot Raw in December 21, before the AFCON in Cameroon, I told,

I mean, I have to say that maybe because of the length of time I've spent covering football and the kind of things I've done in football,

I have access walking privileges with a lot of people at the Nigerian Football Federation.

And I told these guys, I said, listen, you can't sack a head coach with less than a month to an AFCON, and this coach has been with you for five years.

It's ridiculous.

He has already met all the performance milestones in terms of the tournament qualification you've given him.

Let him go to the AFCON.

You signed the contract with him to say, if you didn't win the AFCON in Cameroon, we can fire you.

And he signed the contract, but they didn't even let him go to the AFCON in Cameroon.

So because of that, they had to pay him every penny they owed on his contract to the end of the contract.

which they wouldn't have had to do if he had gone to the AFCON in Cameroon and failed.

And then they brought this guy, Jose Peseru, they said, Oh, we talked to Jose Mourinho about him, he gave us very good vibes about him.

Well, you're supposed to do your homework and know the career of this man, what he has achieved, and what his competencies are.

Telling us that you had a word with Jose Mourinho about him.

I mean, that's just a joke.

And

the way he has managed the team shows that he is a joke.

And I asked members of the Nigerian Football Federation when his initial contract ran out in June, why did you renew the contract?

It is clear that he's not competent.

I mean, can you imagine that the president of the Nigerian Football Federation said that they were going to organize a social media poll to hear from Nigerians whether they should sack the man or not?

If you're a president of a federation, you're supposed to know or you're supposed to lead a federation, you're supposed to have some, some either you have the technical competence yourself or you are surrounded by advisors who do have those competencies to tell you whether your head coach is good or not but lo and behold they decided to keep him on so here we are it's uh it's the theater of the absurd yes i just

pretty much covered everything but i mean literally everything

yeah it makes always makes me laugh when i think about it someone someone said someone said on social media very memorably that if nigeria is explained to you and you understand it then it wasn't explained properly

so this this is this is the greatest indication of that this whole joseph pesera situation can i ask you wilson quickly before we end part one ivory coast how they're they beat guinea bissow too nil but where where are they at do you think i mean i think when when alaira is there we'll see more what what they're like um they won that game very easily the the game was almost ruined by the fact they scored after four minutes and any pressure they might have felt was gone.

They were obviously going to win.

Guinea-Bissau, you know, not a great side.

They lost 6-2 to Mali just before the tournament.

So the early goal sort of decided the game almost before it had been played.

And then it was just a case of sort of running through it.

They're clearly not as strong as

the golden side of 10 years ago, but they're at home.

They are decent.

They should be sort of semi-finals minimum.

And the only way that wasn't going to happen, I think, was if they had a nervous start, but a totally competent tuna winner of Guinea-Bissau, they essentially now have two games to just make sure they finish top of the group and make sure that they, you know, they keep in the right stadium and keep on the easy side of the draw.

All right, that'll do for part one.

Part two, we'll begin with Cameroon's draw with Guinea.

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Coach, the energy out there felt different.

What changed for the team today?

It was the new game day scratchers from the California Lottery.

Play is everything.

Those games sent the team's energy through the roof.

Are you saying it was the off-field play that made the difference on the field?

Hey, a little play makes your day, and today it made the game.

That's all for now.

Coach, one more question.

Play the new Los Angeles Chargers, San Francisco 49ers, and Los Angeles Rams Scratchers from the California Lottery.

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Please play responsibly.

Must be 18 years or older to purchase, play, or claim.

Welcome to part two of the Guardian Football Weekly.

As a Cameroon drew one all with Guinea, Guinea went one up, then went down to 10 men.

I guess Solace did well to hold on after that, do you think?

Yeah, yeah,

you could say that.

I was distinctly all impressed with Cameroon.

The approach in that game was basically to sling a lot of crosses into the box, which was very rudimentary.

There have been a lot of doubts as to the competence of Rigo Betsong on the bench, and that game did very little to allay those doubts and those fears.

Obviously, there's this whole sideshow with Andre Onana and whether he plays the situation with Microsoft United.

So that has, in a way, sort of distracted people from the reality of that opening game, which is that when it was 11v1, Guinea were comfortably the better side, were causing Cameroon all sorts of problems.

And you know, the red card really just took all of the air out of that game and allowed Cameroon to dictate the game, even though they did a very poor job of that.

You know, the approach was very, very basic.

And

let's see what they do going forward.

But it's making it sort of difficult to argue the case for Song.

You know, when especially when you look into how he was appointed and the fact that he has Samuel Leto on his shoulder pretty much every hour of the day, whispering ideas and interfering in how the team is constructed.

What did you make of that Inanna situation, Osasu?

I have a lot of sympathy for him, I have to tell you, because

I mean, he had a brilliant season at Inter, not at the beginning, though, when he was in his last season with Inter, but towards the end and with the Champions League roundy.

I mean, I think he's an incredibly good goalkeeper.

But, you know, as they say, even though class is permanent, form is temporary.

And his form at Manchester United has not been good.

But I have to say that he's not being helped by the team he's playing with as well, because the team is generally poor.

So I think for him, the most important thing is to be mentally strong and to deal with the challenges he's having at the moment and to have the belief in himself that he's still the goalkeeper that I have known him to be and many people know him to be.

I mean with regards to the travel to Abidjan for the tournament, you see my position is very simple.

If you have a tournament, the AFCON on the calendar, FIFA need to be extremely strict with the clubs and say, listen, the tournament starts on day X.

We don't care what games you have by day Y or Z, you've got to release the player.

And it's not about whether the player agrees or not, it is just simply the rule.

And if you don't let the player go and you use the player, any points in your league that you win as a result of him being in the team are nullified.

It's simple.

And if you have that, then there will be no argument of, well, can we keep him to play until this game?

Can we keep...

No, no, no.

See, for me, this issue of the players going to the afcon has been an argument i've had all through my career covering african football going to 30 years we've been having this conversation as far back as 1988 i remember stephen keshy as captain of nigerian 88 had to be flying between brussels and morocco to play games during an afcon he will play for nigeria rush back to belgium to go and play games rush back So this problem is not new.

It's been ongoing, and the solution to it is very simple.

But I think

there's other questions.

I mean, I completely agree with you that those dates for release should just be fixed.

It shouldn't be negotiable.

But it seems to me both coaches have handled this quite badly.

What does it say

to a Manchester point of view, what does it say to Bayendier that Tenhaugh doesn't trust him enough to play him at all in the Carabao Cup, doesn't trust him to, you know, he wants to reduce as far as possible the games he's going to play.

And what does it say to Ondoa for Cameroon?

That

yeah, you can play the first game, but as soon as Inanna can be bothered to get here, then you're out of the team.

That seems a

terrible way to treat the reserve keepers.

And just

it's such a public admission that the coaches have no faith in them.

Is an Andoa, I read somewhere, a distant cousin of Inanna.

I mean, if that I like as a rule, that if your keeper can't make it, one of your family has to step in

and

do the job.

Guys, let's not forget that Ondoa was in goal when Cameroon won the AFCON in 2017.

So it's not exactly an incompetent goalkeeper that we're talking about here.

And then the other odd thing is Cameroon have four goalkeepers in their squad, presumably because Adana's sort of like a half-keeper, which is, you know, just feels like a waste of a player.

Can we talk about Senegal, Solis?

One AFCON in 2021, runners up in 2019.

Um, really convincing win over Gambia.

Yeah, hugely convincing.

I think they've been the best team at this AFCON so far, not just in terms of the results, which let's be fair to Gambia.

Gambia played really well.

Um, again, another game that was sort of defeated by the red card, and then of course, Gambia had to sit back a little bit and offered very, very little of the break.

But

Senegal's performance was really complete.

Um, practically, the structure is there, they have good relationships in wide areas, really lovely triangles on both sides.

Lamin Kamara is a superstar, and he's showing that potential already.

You know, we thought it might take him a couple of years, but he's ready now if you're good enough.

If you're good enough, you're old enough, right?

So he's really

took that game, really took that game by the cross of the neck.

And I think Senegal are just really solid.

You can see watching this team that CC has put in a lot of thought into how the team is composed in terms of picking the right profiles, putting players in the best position to succeed.

And

it's a difficult

ask for any team to get around this

and the other side, I think.

What about Morocco, Assas?

Obviously, had that brilliant World Cup

and exceeded everyone's expectations.

Does that in a way, you know,

when you're successful, that makes it harder, right?

Because expectations rise.

Like, are they in a similar state now?

Do you expect good things of them?

It depends on the mentality with which they approach this AFCON.

Morocco haven't won an AFCON since 1976 in Ethiopia.

And when they won that AFCON, we didn't have a tournament where you had a group stage and then knockout stages.

You had group stages all the way to the end.

So you had first round of groupings.

then a second round of groupings that would then determine who was champion.

So it's been

a lifetime and then some since Morocco have won the AFCON.

The last time they came closest to winning the AFCON was in 2004 in Tunisia, and I was actually there, I covered the tournament, and I actually spent time with the Moroccan team that day.

So I think the issue for me is to see whether they can just adjust.

Because when the players, first of all, they are Moroccan by blood,

but European in terms of their football upbringing and temperament and culture.

When they played at the World Cup in Qatar, I think it was almost like playing at home for them.

So the ambience was totally different.

The Afcon is a lot more robust physically.

The conditions in Ivory Coast are really hot.

and humid.

I mean the humidity is a huge issue.

I mean even for me watching games in the stands, the humidity is atrocious.

I was wilting so I can imagine what it's going to be like for the players so if they're able to deal with what it takes to play at an AFCON in terms of the robustness of the football and managing the conditions well

their talent will tell you that they should actually have a chance of doing well at this afcon but they have to show me that they actually do have that potential because in Cameroon before the World Cup they didn't do well but they did well in Qatar so let's see if they they can prove us wrong this time but I think there's an issue with their side of play isn't there that where they were so successful at the World Cup was we're sitting deep striking on the break defending well at a couple of nations they have to take the game to opponents and I think

they may struggle with that and then just on Senegal I think the really impressive thing about that we we thought or I certainly thought that the last tournament and I spoke to Sadiamana before the tournament and he was saying this is the last chance of this generation but they've got a new generation coming through.

So they've got Mondi and Kulabali and Idrissa Gay and Mane of the old lot.

But then they've got a really impressive young generation, Papisar, Lamin Kamara,

Nicholas Jackson, Larry Onikamo for Bench, Miss Nyakite, Nyakate Toy.

They have replenished.

So, I mean, I know it was against 10 men, but I think Senegal's performance was by far the best we've seen so far.

I mean,

the good thing about Senegal, Jonathan, is that I think their youth development system is perhaps the best on the continent.

So they are producing players all the time.

The only side of it that I'm not happy about is that all the players are going to France.

They don't stay in Senegal.

Senegalese football is not being developed as a result of the talent.

Yes, it helps the national team because if they go to Europe, they're exposed to better coaching, better facilities, to better tactical education.

But it doesn't help the development of Senegalese football as a whole.

But I guess for those who want to see Senegal win a successive AFCON, that's not really relevant.

Is it?

Before the pod, Asaso and Wilson were having a fascinating discussion about shuttle buses.

I'm not going to ask you to repeat

that conversation.

But in terms of infrastructure, Asaso, and you've written about this and

you're there right now.

How is it framing up at the moment, would you say?

The infrastructure is there for the AFCON to be played.

That's at least a good thing.

But is it really to the standard that I would like it to be?

I would say no.

And one of the things that I am greatly concerned about at the AFCON, and I have been concerned about this at other AFCONs, is the quality of the pitches.

As I say, the pitches are the cathedral of the sport.

And if you want to have a good service, the cathedral needs to be in good order.

At the Olympic Stadium, the one at the Bingpe, where the opening game was played and where the final is going to be played, it's quite disturbing to see that after just two matches, the pitch is beginning to brown and it's getting patchy.

So if they don't do some serious remedial work on that pitch, It's going to turn into a potato farm by the final and that's not going to be good.

I also observed the pitch at the Hufu Bwain Stadium, even though I couldn't go to the game, I saw it on television, and I could see that

the integrity of the pitch wasn't holding up.

You see clumps of grass and soil coming up all over the place, and that's not going to be good for the football because if the pitches aren't good, we're not going to have good quality of football, and then players will start getting scared.

I mean, at previous AFCONS, I remember at the AFCON in 2017,

I think it was Babar Rahman of Ghana.

He had a terrible injury at that AFCON because of the pitch, and he had to leave the tournament.

And I think he was out for several months.

And see, and these are the type of things that clubs are scared of because they don't want their players to come back cropped after an AFCON.

I mean, in 2004, I remember

Bolton Wanderers were so concerned about JJ Okorcha's conditioning that they sent their physiotherapist with him to the Afcon just to make sure that he was in good order.

So, you know, these issues are so important.

I mean, yes, we can talk about the transport, although for me, I don't mind because I managed to get my own car, because I just don't want the stress of having to deal with transport when I really don't have to.

But we need to have things working.

I mean, I'll tell you another story again.

Is everyone sitting comfortably?

At the initial press conference before the start of the tournament, the one at which

the CAF president Patrice Mosepe spoke, the press conference was supposed to start at 2 p.m., okay?

But it didn't start until almost 3 p.m.

because the table it was supposed to use wasn't in good order and the carpenters were working on it for a good 50 minutes and then you wonder to yourself

come on, guys, you've had a couple of years to prepare for this AFCON, and you can't even get the table ready in good time for the tournament.

I mean, and

Dr.

Mosepe was quite pissed off, excuse my language, because during

the presser, he basically took over the moderation of the press conference himself.

So, the CAF media aide who was supposed to be picking us to answer questions was just standing there for two and a half hours because I could see he was quite upset because he said he got to the venue at 1.30 for the press conference only to wait for an hour and a half more for it to start.

So there you go.

Yeah, I like carpenters working on the table.

I mean, it's just a table, lads.

It doesn't matter.

I mean, in terms of number of fans that are going, we often hear this from Europe, Wilson, of, you know, the stadiums aren't full.

And I sometimes think we can be guilty of, A, not realizing the size of Africa compared to, say, a Euros, right?

And B, like the disposable income of lots of fans, right?

To get across a massive continent and go to those games.

Do you think sometimes we're guilty of viewing it through that lens?

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean,

you can't compare.

And traveling fans are almost nil apart from the official fan groups who are paid for by the FAs or by the government.

And so, you know, you'll regularly see the Nigeria band with their trombones and everything.

And it's great, but it's sort of two or three thousand of them who have not paid their own tickets.

They're paid supporters.

The idea that an average fan from, I don't know, from Namibia would be making the trip to Goti Voir, I think is it just doesn't happen.

From what I've seen, I mean, I'm judging this by watching on TV.

It seems the crowds are actually pretty good for this tournament, but there certainly have been tournaments in the past where when the host isn't playing, the stadiums are completely empty, whereas it appears to be sort of 10, 15, 20,000 for most games.

And I think that's partly to do with the football culture of the country.

So, Cameroon was pretty good for that.

Ghana was certainly good in 2008.

Some other countries, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, that hasn't been the case outside the capital.

I don't know to what extent pricing is the issue.

I mean, certainly in Gabon, they would sort of open the gates with 15 minutes in the game, let people in for free.

So, that wasn't a pricing issue.

And the thing I've always been told is

it's just a football culture issue that there's not the same sort of tradition of going to the ground that you'd have in Europe because so much football is watched on TV, whether at home or in a bar.

Solis, you agree with that?

Yeah, there's definitely, but the truth is, it took a while to get there.

There are factors that led to that general sort of distaste for going to the stadium, which is, you know, stuff like security.

We saw the last Afghan, you know, loss of lives during

during one of the games, which was very unfortunate.

So these are the sorts of things that are the back of people's minds.

And generally, when you talk about going to football, it's something you want to take a whole family.

You know, I want to go view the football.

It's like a real day out.

But if there's no guarantee of security,

it makes that prospect a lot less palatable for most people.

So, yeah,

there's that.

There's other factors that we've discussed already, which is pricing of tickets and really just how untenable it is to travel within Africa.

Africa is huge, and you know, flight prices just don't make any sense when you

compare relative distances here in Africa, in other parts of the world.

Distances compared to the pricing that you get is just ridiculous.

And it's also you've covered a lot of Afcons.

Like, do you see it as a tournament, like its development over the years?

How would you,

how have you seen it?

Do you think it's in a good place?

Yes.

and no

yes in terms of the fact that Africans take the Afcon very seriously, it is a staple diet of the African football calendar.

It's a part of our football culture.

And we would like it to stay every two years.

This

malarkey of having an AFCON every four years, it doesn't work for Africa, I'm sorry.

I mean, you can do that in Europe where you have a hugely successful Champions League, but the

AFCON is the mainstay of African football, not the CAF Champions League.

So

you can only

change the scheduling of the AFCON when club football in Africa is much more financially successful for CAF, because the AFCON is its main source of income.

Now, where I have a huge issue with where the AFCON is at the moment is its size.

From a football perspective, it is good to see that the 24-team format allows teams like Gambia, Comoros, and Cape Verde to

produce results that are showing that they are capable of competing against the bigger sides.

But if you look at the 2014 AFCON from an economic point of view, it's so expensive to organize.

And very few countries in Africa can singly host it.

And even if you decide to go with the co-hosting route, that causes its own complications because then it means that CAF, like for instance, in 2027, we are having Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania co-host a tournament.

And that's going to be the first time in the history of the African Cup of Nations that three countries will be staging the AFCON at the same time, which means that every country will have its own local organizing committee.

CAF would have to deal with three governments in terms of the preparation for the AFCON instead of one.

And I think that this is really not necessary.

And so even though there is a footballing reason for the AFCON to be at a 24-team level, I still think that we need to go back to the 16-team format so that it is much easier to manage and to even reduce the time.

Because when we had a 16-team AFCON, you could play the tournament in three weeks, okay?

And at least, even though European clubs will continue to complain, I don't care, even if we made the AFCON one week, they would still complain.

But at least it was three weeks when it was 16 and even just over two weeks when it was 12.

But when you have it at a 24-team level for a whole month, that has its own problems.

I don't know if the current leadership of CAF will have the courage to face the economic realities of keeping this 24-team AFCON.

So I'm not so confident that it will ever reduce in size, but the economic imperative to bring it back to the 16-team format is definitely there.

I'm just thinking,

you also

said something about

the AFCON being such a big deal for African football and how that

we don't have the same situation as Europe where club football is so vibrant.

But my thing there is, isn't there a bit of a chicken and egg thing there?

Which is that, okay, so so if we stick with the way things are, the development of club football is an end in itself.

It's not just a means.

Okay, so what then is the incentive for CAF to actually build African club football?

If we keep saying that the Afghan is this huge thing that can't be messed with, can't be touched.

It just seems then that we are resigned to the status quo, which is that club football will never really grow, will never be improved, it won't get better.

So we might as well just stick with what we have now and you know, beat that horse till it's dead.

Now, look, here's the problem:

if you if you have an economic model that is giving you a certain level of income, before you change it, you need to know that you can at least make the same amount of money or more with an alternative that you're going to bring in.

I mean, personally, I would love the African Champions League to have a much bigger profile and make more money money so that African football in Africa will develop.

Because if the club game is not developing in Africa, it's a problem for the overall future of football on the continent.

But the problem is that when you don't have the money coming in, you can't change the format.

So it's for those who are responsible for governance to do this, to look for partners, financial partners, that they can attract to the Champions League so that we can actually change this format.

All right, that'll do for part two.

Part three will do any other business.

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Coach, the energy out there felt different.

What changed for the team today?

It was the new game day scratchers from the California Lottery.

Play is everything.

Those games sent the team's energy through the roof.

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Welcome to part three of the Guardian for Weekly.

So tomorrow, look, we'll cover the FFP stories with Everton and Nottingham Forest, Manchester City.

We've got a campaigner from Reading Supporters Group about their ownership.

We'll do the FA Cup replays as well, but there was a question from specifically for Wilson Adam saying, how furious was Wilson that the second part of this week's Silent Witness got postponed for Bristol City West Ham on BBC One?

Not at all because I tend not to watch it live.

I prefer to watch it as one block.

So what I was very happy about was that last week

they released the Tuesday one in the morning so I could download it before I go on the flight, which is great news.

Gary says, hi, Max.

After getting sacked by Roma, where does the panel think Jose Mourinho will spend the next next three years before once again getting the sack?

Yes, this is the news that Roma has sacked Jose Mourinho with the club ninth in Seria.

They lost 3-1 at Milan on Sunday and went out of the Copper Italia last Wednesday against Lazio.

There was footage of Mourinho in tears as he left the training ground.

Is it bad of me, Solas, to think that

I don't know he he didn't mean them because

that's Jose.

Or like, does everyone have a heart?

I mean,

he's always come across as a very

emotive, emotional person.

So, I want to I want to assume that he did mean it and he has forged something of a good relationship with the Roma faithful.

So, yeah.

I think the news of Isak came as a surprise to many people, but it's sort of been in that way.

In truth, he's not, his results have not really justified the club's outlay in terms of wage bill and even in terms of transfers.

I mean, this is this is the the area we're talking about.

It's not Premier League, there's not a massive amount of cash flowing for most teams.

So, um,

with the resources he has, definitely Roma should be doing a lot better than Ninth.

Um, so that's that's what you get with Mourinho.

You are hiring a coach who you trust to get results, regardless of whatever he has to work with.

And if he's not doing that, then what really is the point of it?

He could manage Tunisia, couldn't he?

I mean, that seems like a perfect fit to

imagine heaven, or he could come manage Nigeria, He apparently recommend, yeah, he recommended for Sarah, right?

He could come manage Nigeria.

Although it is true to say that he had a really good relationship with the fans, and some of the fans came out and applauded him and then booed the players as they left training.

Daniel DeRossi, who

played over 600 times for Roma, has been appointed the new manager.

David Ornstein Athletic reporting that Jordan Henderson has reached an agreement with El Etifac to leave the Saudi pro league and join Ajax.

Wilson, thoughts?

I wish he hadn't gone.

I don't really think, in terms of reputation, there's any coming back.

I guess, in some ways, do you applaud him for recognising he wasn't happy and rather than just sort of soldiering on for reasons of pride, taking the financial hit?

But I don't know, it sort of feels like a career in reverse.

A career should be you're a kid who comes through Ajax,

you show promise, you join Liverpool, and when you're a bit older and knackered, you go to Sunderland.

It shouldn't be the other way around.

And it suggests to me that something's went wrong in football.

He's the the Benjamin Button of football.

Yeah, exactly.

He's living a career backwards.

Finally, Rachel says, I know nothing is more boring than details of other people's dreams.

So I'll keep my first ever Football Weekly dream brief.

I was so excited to get invited to the Football Weekly New Year's Eve party at Max's house and have a blast hanging out with all the usual panelists.

Max fell asleep, snoring on the couch well before midnight.

Seems very accurate.

Lots of us went to the after party at Barry's house, which I was surprised to learn was in a medieval themed apartment complex, complete with armored knights in the stained glass windows, looking out over the rural, snowy fields outside.

I mean,

that is weirdly accurate, except it's not knights, it's cover cuts of the other books.

That's very true.

I would love it if Barry, you know, Barry decided to take up medieval reenactments.

So I'm fully behind.

I'm fully behind making that a running thing, so a live show.

That's what he has to do.

Anyway, Rachel in Los Osos in California says, looking forward to New Year 2025.

And that's all we have time for.

Thank you, chaps.

I enjoyed that.

We should do it again before Afcon is up.

Thank you, Asasi.

Thanks for coming on.

You're welcome.

Anytime.

Thank you, Solis.

Yeah, a real pleasure.

And thank you, Wilson.

Cheers.

Thank you.

Football Weekly is produced by Joel Grove.

Our executive producer is Christian Bennett.

We'll be back tomorrow.

This is The Guardian.