Papiss Cissé and Demba Ba, along with their Senegal team mates, exited from the Arican Cup Of Nations last night in farcical conditions. The players could now even be available for Blackburn next Wednesday, though possibly Villa on Sunday 5th February is more realistic.
Their brief campaign only lasted two matches but they packed in a lot in the 180 minutes, not much of it good.
Last night, a shocking pitch was an added factor but how the third favourites managed to lose to a country around 100 places below them in the world rankings is anybody’s guess. Their opening defeat against Zambia could have seen them beaten by six or seven with some quite desperate defending throughout, while last night Senegal only managed a goal in the 89th minute, shortly followed by Equatorial Guinea’s winner.
Our boys? Ba was pretty average and passed up chances he would normally knock in with his eyes shut if dressed in black & white, while Cissé has shown some flashes of brilliance but couldn’t hit the back of the net either. However, the supply line to the strikers wasn’t that much better than Senegal’s defending.
Naturally I’m over the moon, like every other Newcastle fan, that we’ll have our strikers back at the earliest opportunity.
However, when watching their matches I did wonder if a cracking tournament for them was more likely to lead to cracking form once they get ‘home’. No doubt they will be hurting after the players let their country down and I’m guessing it hasn’t been well received back in Senegal.
Let’s hope they quickly snap out of their disappointment when they return after Sunday’s final match against Libya, this could still be a massive season for both players, with everything to play for with Newcastle United.
As for the slightly forgotten Cheick Tiote, I don’t think we’ll be seeing him any time soon as tournament favourites the Ivory Coast are pretty nailed on to go through, if not win the whole thing.
They continue their campaign later today against Burkina Faso at 7pm tonight, which you can watch live on Eurosport. A word of warning though, last night’s Senegal match was in TV schedules as starting at 7pm but actually started at 8.15pm, so might be worth checking first before you sit down and watch our Ivory Coast all action hero.
