By Hassan Osman Kargbo
This year’s Africa Cup of Nation (Afcon) has ended and it’s a never to be forgotten tournament where many described the Champion, Ivory Coast, as a team that fall from Grass to Grace. Many described the Ivory Coast team so because they lost two games out of three games in their group stage but they still made it to the final.
Ivory Coast hope to make it to the round of 16 was under a big threat, unless they managed to qualify to the Knockout stage as one of the best losers. They dismissed their head coach immediately after their group stage and brought an interim manager.
They scored an 86th minute’s equalizer to force their way into the extra time and knocked out the defending champions Senegal on Penalties. They also scored a 90th-minute equalizer after they had gone a man down in the 43rd minutes of played and got a late stoppage time goal against Mali which led them to advance to the semi-final. Ivory Coast came very strong in the semi-final and secured a 65th minutes winning goal against DR Congo and advance to the final.
In the finals, Nigeria took the lead and Ivory Coast fought very hard and got their equalizer in the 62 minutes of played and scored the decisive winning goal in the 81 minutes to defeat Nigeria and became the champion of this year’s AFCON. 
Interestingly, Senegal didn’t lose any match at the group stage. But when they played against Ivory Coast that had lost 2 matches, they were eliminated. But, that particular encounter many think Senegal would have progressed into the next stage.
In all of this, Ivory Coast really proved to be a testament of determination, hard work and perseverance is the key to any thing. They started from Grass and now they’re the Grace of this year’s AFCON.
