Luanda - The African Nations Championship (CAN) in football ended its 2023 edition Sunday 11 February with a "smiling" balance for the Angolan National Team (Palancas Negras).
Despite having their "dream" of making history interrupted, Angola undoubtedly had their best ever showing in the final stages of continental football's top competition, with previously unthinkable numbers.
They came close to achieving the unprecedented until they stumbled against the mighty Nigeria, who ended up as African runners-up after eliminating Angola in the quarter-finals.
The general assessment of the Palancas Negras' performance in this edition, won by the hosts from Côte d'Ivoire, with a 2-1 victory over Angola's executioners at the Ebimpé Olympic Stadium in Abidjan, puts the merits or demerits of the cause on the table.
It's true that Angola has been in the final stages of the event for the ninth time, reaching the quarter-finals for the third time and with unprecedented numbers, starting at the top of Group D with seven points.
It also has the fact that, for the first time, it has triumphed three times in an event of this kind: 2-0 against Burkina Faso, 3-2 against Mauritania and 3-0 against Namibia. They also drew with Algeria (1-1) and suffered a fateful defeat in the quarter-finals against Nigeria (0-1).
Given everything that happened on the pitch in the match with the Nigerians, the missed chances, most notably Zine Salvador's shot at the far post, victory could well have gone to the Angolans, but fate favoured the theoretically superior opponents, as the statistics show.
The only team on the pitch was Nigeria, who have made 20 appearances in the CAN in 34 editions, 11 more than Angola, and who took part in the event with a squad made up of 99.5 per cent of players who play in the main leagues in the diaspora, especially in Europe.
Of the 25 players called up by their coach, the Portuguese José Peseiro, only one, substitute goalkeeper Olorunleke Ojo, plays for the domestic team Enyimba Football Club in the Nigerian Premier League.
In comparative terms, the national team, curiously also led by a Portuguese, Pedro Gonçalves, featured six players who play for domestic teams: two goalkeepers, Neblú (1.º de Agosto) and Gelson (Interclube), Tó Carneiro, Eddie Afonso, Gilberto and Quinito (Petro de Luanda).
In sport, this factor, which at first may seem of little relevance, is actually not. It has a great influence on experience and even on the athlete's psyche.
For example, the Nigerian squad is fortunate to have Africa's best player, Victor Osimhen, a Napoli striker who has played for several European clubs.
His market value is estimated at 110 million euros, five times higher than the total cost of the entire Angolan squad, estimated at more than 22 million euros.
The most expensive player of angolan national team is Zito Luvumbo, who made his debut in the 2023-24 season in Europe's top league, Italy's Serie A, for Cagliari, with a price tag of around five million euros.
In terms of historical participation in the CAN, the country's best finishes were the quarter-finals achieved in Ghana'2008 and Angola'2010, which at the time corresponded to the first stage of qualifying, following the group stage, against its three-time African champion counterpart (1980, 1994 and 2013). VKY/MC/IZ/DAN/DOJ
