Big names fall by wayside en route to finals

By Peter Auf der Heyde Jan 17, 2012, 8:31 GMT

Libreville, Gabon - South African players wildly celebrated their goalless draw against Sierra Leone in their final Africa Cup of Nations qualifier, but it turned out to become the comical highlight to a qualifying campaign marked by unexpected outcomes.

Bafana players thought a draw would be good enough to make the finals instead of Niger, based on the head-to-head result.

But neither South African players nor officials had taken into consideration that Sierra Leone finished on the same amount of points and went ahead on what was now a three-team tiebreak.

It was not only Bafana who were ambushed en route.

Egypt, who won the last three editions of the showpiece of African football, finished bottom of group G.

And like South Africa, Nigeria seemed hopelessly unaware of the qualifying rules of the competition.

In their final game against Guinea, the Super Eagles thought they needed a two-goal victory to qualify as group winners. What they did not take into consideration was that they would have also qualified as one of the two best runners-up with a one-goal win.

Thus, when Ikechukwu Uche gave them the lead with six minutes to go, they continued pressing forward in search of another goal, thereby allowing Guinea an injury-time equalizer on the break.

Guinea finished top of the group, while Nigeria were knocked out.

Super Eagles coach Samson Siasia - since fired - apologized after the defeat: 'We want to apologize to all Nigerians. We have not qualified for the Nations Cup, and we take responsibility as a team.'

In Group K, Botswana caused one of the biggest upsets in Africa Nations Cup qualifying by finishing ahead of Tunisia.

The Tunisians themselves flirted with elimination, and it was only a Chadian goal four minutes into injury time that denied Malawi second place in the group and a place at the January 21-February 12 finals, which will be co-hosted by Equatorial Guinea and Gabon.

Tunisia are one of just three Arab-speaking countries at the finals, with Morocco edging out the Central African Republic and bitter rivals Algeria in Group D, while Libya took one of the places allocated to the two-best runners-up from groups A to J.

Libya's qualification provided a fairy-tale ending to their qualifying campaign, which coincided with a violent civil war that resulted in the overthrow of Moammar Gaddafi.

Amid the bloody conflict, Libya played their qualifying campaign with fighting in the region forcing them to play two of their three home matches on neutral ground.

They finished one point behind Zambia in group C but won the runners-up rankings ahead of Sudan, who also qualified for the finals after finishing second behind Ghana in group I.

For Libyan players, even just qualifying for the tournament is a triumph.

'When you see how we arrived, it has been very hard. When we had the war in our country, we didn't train. We played two games and we qualified, so for us just being at the cup is a success,' said Mohamed el-Mounir, who plays his club football in Serbia.

Through to the finals were Ivory Coast, who cruised to the finals by winning all their games in group H.

Burkina Faso, who won group F, were only guaranteed their place in the finals last week after the Court of Arbitration for Sport turned down a Namibian appeal that would have seen Burkina Faso thrown out of the competition.

The remaining two places at the finals went to Angola, who beat group J and group A winner Mali.