Angola win a vital Point against Algeria

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 Côte 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.

However, Angola coach, Pedro Gonçalves was satisfied with his team’s performance after they came back from a goal down to get a point against Algeria in the first game of Group D of the  Africa Cup of Nations Côte d’Ivoire 2023.

Speaking after the game, Pedro Gonçalves credited his team’s efforts in the second half after starting the first half on a slow.
“This team started slowly but we managed to find some spaces and came back into the game in the second half which the team did better,” he said.

Pedro Gonçalves was impressed with his side’s mentality and will expect more in the remaining games.
“The work isn’t done. The team showed that mentally they are up there so we will continue to build on this in our next matches,” he concluded

Next for Algeria will be a clash against Burkina Faso on Saturday at 14h00, while Angola face Mauritania in the 20h00 Kick Off.