And so soon the 2010 African Cup of Nations in Angola that was heralded by an unprecedented armed attack on one of the competing teams will come to an end this weekend. It has been days of battle of nerves and sinews involving 16 crack teams from around the continent and in the final analysis we are left with four teams in the medal zone, three of them upsetting the experts’ predictions.

Apart from defending champions  Egypt, who started the tournament on a sound footing by beating Nigeria 3-1,  the remaining semi-finalists all had stuttering take offs. Algeria who will face Egypt, incredibly lost the opening match 3-0 to Malawi, Ghana were trounced 3-1 by Cote d’Ivoire and Nigeria lost 3-1 to Egypt

I wholly agree with analysts who say the semi final pairings of Egypt v Algeria and Ghana v Nigeria depict a fair representation of the soccer might of North Africa and their western counterparts.
Matches between Ghana and Nigeria have a peculiar attraction and Thursday’s encounter should be no exception.

The Algeria- Egypt pairing is a rather tricky affair that could evoke emotions following their recent tempestuous world cup qualifying series that saw Algeria qualifying in a play off in Sudan.

For the health of African football, it is the hope of football fans that the two opponents won’t repeat the nasty scenes we saw in Sudan but display unbridled sportsmanship and let the game play.  It is recalled that Sudan were rather uncomfortable hosts of the World Cup decider and had to bear the brunt of rioting Algerian and Egyptian football hooligans.

Angola is already brooding over their early elimination from the tournament and the repercussions of the armed attack on the Togolese team; they should therefore be spared the agony of having to combat any unwarranted soccer riots at this point in time.

On the whole, one could surmise that the big four in the semi finals is a true reflection of the strength of African football. Ghana, Algeria, and Nigeria are all World Cup finalists for South Africa 2010 and Egypt are the defending champions gunning for an unprecedented hat-trick in the Cup of Nations. You can hardly get such an array of talents on one stage. In truth African soccer is on the rise.

Cheers everybody and keep loving sports.