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African Cup of Nations 2015: A Review

By on February 10, 2015

Ivory Coast ended a 23-year long wait to lift their second Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) trophy on Sunday night, coming out victorious 9-8 on penalties against Ghana.  This year’s final is the fifth to be decided by penalties of the nine tournaments since 2000; however, few will be as memorable as this one largely due to the enigmatic performance of Ivory Coast’s 35-year old goalkeeper Boubacar Barry.  He managed to be a comedian, villain, and a hero: theatrically feigning injury, saving his opposite number’s spot-kick and then scoring the decisive penalty.

This year’s AFCON was hastily hosted by Equatorial Guinea – who surprised many finishing fourth place –- after Morocco pulled out due to fears of the Ebola virus spreading. In the opening fixture of the tournament — over three weeks ago, held in Bata in the same venue as the final –- the hosts sent the home crowd into raptures sixteen minutes in through a flowing attacking move deftly finished by Emilio Nsue. The goal was met with rapturous glee from the home support and so began this year’s Cinderella-like story of Equatorial Guinea, ranked a lowly 118th in the FIFA World Rankings.

AFCON 2015 really had a bit of everything in it, from off-field drama to on-field drama. Now that it is over I feel bereft, so with this post I aim to relive the tournament by discussing a few of the highlights and some observations.

Goals

The opening game ended up as a 1-1 draw, which really set the tone for the rest of the group stage: 13 of the 24 games were stalemates. This year’s AFCON tournament will also be remembered for a lack of goals. It registered the second-lowest number of goals – 68 – since becoming a 16-team tournament in 1996.

In spite of the low quantity of goals, this year’s tournament saw some corkers. In my opinion, the three best were:

3) Mandia Masango’s volley for South Africa against Ghana

2) Yaya Touré’s half-volley against DR Congo in the Semi-Final for Ivory Coast

1) Christian Atsu’s phenomenal left-footed curler against Guinea – which won the goal of the tournament award

I must make an honorable mention to Moussa Sow’s brilliant, route one, stoppage-time winner against Ghana in the first round of group matches in Group C – this tournament’s so-called ‘Group of Death’.

And, that brings me to another observation: as the chart below indicates teams really left it until late on to score in AFCON 2015.  Well over half of the 68 goals scored in this year’s tournament occurred in the second halves of games, 46 (≈ 67%) to be precise. Over half of the goals, thirty-six, were scored after the sixtieth minute.

Question of Luck or Skill?

A theme I have looked at in-depth on my blog is how to use the publicly available statistics (WhoScored.com) on AFCON 2015 to quantify the luck and skill of the participating teams to see if there is any pattern. The question I wanted to answer is: does luck play a key role in knockout tournaments like AFCON?

The answer in this year’s AFCON is yes, but skill prevailed in the end as Ghana and Ivory Coast were the two ‘most skillful’ teams at this year’s tournament. I’ll try to explain:

James Grayson, a preeminent name in the statistical analysis of football, is widely credited as the first person to use ice hockey statistics to analyze football matches. Over at his fantastic blog he has a primer on a statistic known as PDO, which is used to indicate the luck of a team. Simply put, the higher the PDO value, the luckier a team is. You arrive at PDO by adding up the percentage of goals scored from shots on target a team takes, and the percentage of goals it concedes from the shots hit on target against them. This is on my y-axis in the chart below. On the x-axis are the Shots on Target Ratio (SoTR) which is the number of shots on target a team takes, divided by the total number of shots on target hit by them and their opponents. Again, put simply, the further a team is to the right on the chart the more skill they have. The higher the SoTR is the more dominant the team is. What we learn from the chart below is that Ivory Coast and Ghana were the most skillful teams at this tournament as measured by how they dominated the group matches. They also did not rely on luck as much as the other quarter-finalists.

Last Observations

This year’s AFCON sadly also had two huge controversies that I hope will never be repeated:

1) Drawing of lots to decide on a quarter-finalist: In Group D, Mali and Guinea were completely tied after the final game: they had precisely the same record: 3 games played, 3 draws, 3 goals scored, 3 goals conceded. Instead of finishing the game on the football pitch (strange that, since it is a football tournament, after all), the team’s progression to the quarter-finals was decided by drawing names out of a hat. No team’s fate should be decided this way and it is up to the authorities to ensure there is a better plan in place for this next time: i.e. decide it over extra-time and penalties!

2) Crowd trouble in semi-final between Ghana and Equatorial Guinea: the gulf in quality between the two sides was evident and I fear the home-crowd took their frustration from this out on the traveling crowd. Sure, crowd trouble happens everywhere, that’s a given. However, Sepp Blatter clubbing-in and deriding Western media’s supposed hyperbolic reaction to the events, which led to 30+ minutes of stoppage in play, seems bang out of order. A simple fix would have been to finish the game, which was effectively ended as a contest, there and then.

To end on a more uplifting note, a key takeaway from this year’s tournament for me is the concept of fans presenting the man of the match with their trophy. I think this idea is inspired and it works on so many levels: not only does it bring the fans closer to the game, but it also provides unbridled joy through picturing real characters with the man of the match. Just look at this Tweet from the BBCs John Bennett here.

‘Til next time AFCON

Surprised by the Equatorial Guinea’s fourth-place finish, names being drawn out of a hat to decide on a quarter-finalist; amazed by the quality of the goals scored and appalled by some iffy refereeing; troubled by crowd problems but delighted by the general atmosphere and inspired by fans presenting the man of the match trophy. The AFCON tournaments offer so much: both good and bad. But that’s football.

About Charlie Champagne

An Aberdeen fan living in Brussels who writes a lot about football. Likes to look into Belgian, Dutch and Scottish football (mostly), but also likes to look at football stats.