The State of Play
Heading into the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations in early 2022, Algeria were the dominant force in African football. They flopped quite badly with a group stage exit and then missed out on 2022 FIFA World Cup qualification after extra time to Cameroon. They have stuck by Djamel Belmadi, though, and the north Africans have rebuilt their mystique with an excellent array of talent across the pitch and they head into the tournament hoping to put right what went oh so wrong in Cameroon a couple of years ago.
Angola are an improving side with an intent on playing a relatively easy on the eye style of football, under the management of Pedro Goncalves. They remain a stubborn side, too, though, but do face an uphill battle in this year’s tournament in a group with Algeria and a strong Burkina Faso side, as well as Mauritania.
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The tricky decisions for Djamel Belmadi are a blessing that not many managers on the African continent have. The quality of depth causes the most headaches for Belmadi and the Algerians with the likes of Rais M’Bohli, Rayan Ait-Nouri, Sofiane Feghouli, Fares Chaibi, Hicham Boudaoui and Baghdad Bounedjah among those who could and likely will miss out on the starting eleven.
As for Angola, there are issues defensively with arguably too many left-sided defensive options unbalancing the team but there are no injury concerns so Pedro Goncalves will be able to pick his absolute best starting line-up for the clash against one of the pre-tournament heavyweights.
Expected Line-ups
Algeria: Mandrea; Atal, Mandi, Touba, Bensebaini; Bennacer, Bentaleb; Mahrez, Aouar, Ounas; Slimani
Angola: Neblu; Gaspar, Quinito, Afonso, Fortuna; Manuel Keliano, Milson, Augusto; Luvumbo, Mabululu; Show
What they Said
Djamel Belmadi has discussed his eagerness to get the tournament underway: “We are happy to be here and were in a hurry to start the tournament. We had a good preparation, something that we didn’t get in the last AFCON and of course our target is to win this competition like many teams. We know it will be tough.”
Last month, Angola boss, Pedro Goncalves, said that the intention for his side is ‘together we’re going to take Angola to the top of African football’ with the aim to go deep into this competition.
When and How to Watch
The game at the Stade de la Paix will kick off at 20:00 on Monday January 15th and will be shown live on Sky Sports in the UK. Subscribers to Sky Sports can alternately stream the game online via the ‘Sky Go’ app.
Prediction
There aren’t too many hammerings in the opening stages of many major tournaments and in particular the Africa Cup of Nations. In fact, the lack of goals was a bit of an issue a couple of years ago but that was when Algeria were significantly underperforming. Angola are not necessarily a team that will sit back too much, either, so a comfortable Algerian win with some space likely to be afforded to the north Africans seems likely.
