It could not end “normally”, that is to say at the end of a match like there are a thousand every day, on a sporting verdict. Opposed to the Cameroonian selection this Monday in Yaoundé in the round of 16 of the African Cup of Nations, the Comoros national team, Petit Poucet continental (around 900,000 inhabitants in the archipelago) born in football or almost in 2014 , had left to appear without a professional goalkeeper on the lawn of the Paul Biya Olembé omnisports stadium. Outsiders given a one-in-a-hundred chance on a regular basis, El Fardou Ben Nabouhane and others then fell into unknown territory, where nothing and no one can serve as a model for them.
It was the Covid-19 that hit the training trained by Amir Abdou, as it previously decimated Tunisia (a dozen cases last week), Guinea-Bissau (a dozen cases on January 9) and so many others during the competition. In addition to six staff members including Abdou himself, six players have tested positive, including the two able-bodied goalkeepers, Moyadh Ousseni and Ali Ahamada.
“We brought together the available outfield players and asked them if there were any who felt like taking the gloves, explained Sunday the coach of the goalkeepers of the selection, the French Jean-Daniel Padovani. We wanted it to come from them first. We had potential candidates. It’s quite funny, it is also better to take it like that. Afterwards, we will fight with our values and everything that has brought us so far. Padovani then had to sort through the volunteers: “Size, weight, speed”, an empiricism worthy of schoolyard football organized after the canteen.
Flurry of positive cases
Monday morning, divine surprise: Ahamada went negative. Which, subject to additional examinations, allows him to keep the goals of the Coelacanths. Admittedly, the rules were defined before the competition and they apply to everyone: any player positive to the PCR test is dismissed pending his negativity, which allows him to return in stride – but in what state, it is a another problem. However, many followers are surprised or sneer behind the scenes. The coach, Abdou, noted the somewhat sardonic behavior of the samplers (“they were taking pictures smiling”).
And the verdict surprised. A disciplined team whose players have for the most part been forged in the headwinds of the hexagonal amateur divisions, the Comoros have been very strict in their approach to the tournament: one per room, no activity practiced in common (or even as a duo) out of training and a rigor that has carried them for a long time, the only possibility of existing with such a thin reservoir of players. The flurry of positive cases on the return from Garoua, where the Comoros fell Ghana (3-2) on Tuesday, was therefore surprising.
Just like the distribution of Covid cases over the 24 selections competing in the tournament: counting the preparation period, that is to say taking December 27 as a starting point, only two teams were spared and it turns out that Cameroon, the host country, is among them with Mauritania. On the other hand, it must be believed that facing the Indomitable Lions brings bad luck.
full mystery
The Comorians had gone through before the shadow of the round of 16 in Yaoundé became clearer and the Burkinabè had deplored the loss of four players for the same reasons the day before their opening match lost (1-2) against the Cameroonians. This had pushed them to howl at the conspiracy and the instrumentalization of the tests all the more easily since no one knew exactly who, from the host country or the African Confederation organizing the event, had carried out the controls (antigenic, moreover) who had decimated the team.
In short: we swim in full mystery, it being understood that it is impossible to go beyond simple observation and suspicion. The Comorians will manage, like the other participants in this somewhat baroque CAN, where the ghost of a murdered player was evoked without laughing at a press conference by a journalist to explain the elimination of the Algerian title holder from the first round. At least the Coelacanths should be able to field a true Guardian.
