The Africa Cup of Nations has always scored few goals, but traditional African teams like Senegal have still brushed a surprising record. They scored just one goal in three group games, but the team still advanced to the knockout rounds with a first-place finish. Looking at the Intercontinental Cup matches on five continents, such a low number of goals can still qualify for the first place in the group, I am afraid that this is the only one.
In this cup, Senegal and Guinea, Zimbabwe and Malawi are in the same group. Guinea still has a lot of quality players, Zimbabwe also has Ligue 1 champions, but Malawi's presence is too low. Compared to Senegal, which has world-class players in the goalkeeper, defender, midfield and forward positions, these other three teams look like foils.
However, when the game really kicked, it was not like that.
In the first match, Senegal had more than 60% of the ball on goal, and they had 13 shots on goal, but only 3 shots on goal. It wasn't until the last minute of second-half stoppage time that Senegal were awarded a penalty and the top star Mane took the penalty and the team beat Zimbabwe to three points.
In the second round against Guinea, the two teams played very dull, and in the whole game, the two teams contributed only 10 shots on goal, and the two team goalkeepers contributed only three saves in total. The match ended in a dull 0-0.
In the third match, against FIFA-ranked 129th-ranked Malawi, Senegal also did not show a crushing advantage. They did have an incredible 78 percent possession, but the team had only 9 shots on goal, and only 3 shots from their targets. The match still ended 0-0.
But the unthinkable happened. In the second round, Malawi beat Zimbabwe, which had Lyon's striker Cardwell, 2-1 thanks to Muhango, who played in the South African Premier League. In the third round, Zimbabwe relied on the goals of veteran Mussotti and South African league minor Mahaci to win 2-1 against Guinea, which has Liverpool's Nabi Keita.
In this environment, Guinea and Malawi both scored 4 points, while Zimbabwe also scored 3 points. Senegal, which scored just one goal but scored five points, finished first in the group. Guinea and Malawi both scored 2 goals and conceded 2 goals, with exactly the same goal difference, goals scored and points. In the end, because Guinea had the advantage in each other's record, they narrowly squeezed out their opponents to advance to the knockout rounds.
In this group, there were only 8 goals in all 6 group games, and the average number of goals per game was only 1.33, which is the worst attacking group in the 6 groups so far. And in 8 games, 2 of the scores are 0-0, accounting for one-third, such a high ratio is rare.
Senegal, which has a combined value of more than €300 million, scored zero goals in all three group matches, but the team advanced to the knockout stages. This is probably an unprecedented record. In all three games, Senegal only shot at the target 8 times, while Senegal, with a value of 80 million, scored only 1 goal.
The team with the strongest attack in this cup has become Cameroon in Group A, they scored 7 goals in 3 games, and in the group stage, Vincent Abubakar scored 5 goals, and he is very hopeful to win the Golden Boot of this tournament.