Breathtaking Ending Saves Boring AfCON. Don't Let Anyone Tell You Otherwise!

Rhys Hartley shares his views on the controversy that surrounded the final minutes of this year's AfCON in the context of his experience at the tournament.

There was an air of inevitability as the referee went over to the VAR screen in the 98th minute. Brahim Diaz's claim that he'd been pulled to the ground by El Hadji Malick Diouf from a corner seemed soft in real time but you knew that it would be given as soon as Jean Jacques Ndala was asked to consult the monitor. 

Just a few minutes before, the Congolese ref had been keen to blow his whistle for an even softer foul before the ball was headed into the opposite net, rendering VAR unable to intervene. And so it seemed as though everything was set up for the Moroccan hosts to win AfCON for the first time in 50 years. (For the record, the host nation has ended up winning the trophy 12 times.)

What happened next though, nobody could have predicted. Despite all the rigmarole, the debates over who was in the right, the usual comments of 'scenes nobody likes to see,' it reminded us all that football can still deliver some of the most incredible drama in the world – even when it seems fixed. 

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