West African giants Ghana and Nigeria both suffered chastening defeats in Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers on Tuesday, \u200bwhile Algeria fought back from two goals down to avoid a shock loss to Burundi.<\/p>\n
Tiny Cape Verde, who won legions of admirers with their gutsy exploits \u200cat this year’s World Cup, also went down in a surprise loss at home to Rwanda.<\/p>\n
But heavyweight contenders Egypt, Morocco and Senegal all won difficult away assignments, and there were home wins for Benin, Comoros, Gabon, the Ivory Coast, Mali, Mozambique, Uganda and Zambia on a busy day of 17 matches in the preliminaries for the 2027 finals to be co-hosted by Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda.<\/p>\n
Ghana, one of Africa\u2019s 10 representatives at \u200bthe World Cup where they reached the last 32, surrendered a 2-0 lead in a stunning 4-2 home defeat by Gambia in Accra.<\/p>\n
Gambia, whose population is under \u200bthree million compared with Ghana’s almost 35 million, hit back through a Muhammed Badamosi penalty and goals from Omar Colley and substitute Ebrima \u2060Colley, who struck twice.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Ernest Nuamah and Felix Afena-Gyan had put the Black Stars two goals ahead after 33 minutes, but their collapse prompted angry home supporters to throw bottles onto the \u200bpitch in the closing stages.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The result increased the pressure on veteran coach Carlos Queiroz after they opened their Group C campaign with a loss away to Ivory Coast last week.<\/p>\n
Coventry City’s \u200bYann Gboho made a dramatic debut for Ivory Coast, coming off the bench to break Somalia’s stubborn resistance in the final minute before Bazoumana Toure added a second five minutes into stoppage time to complete a 2-0 win.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Nigeria, who were semi-finalists at the last Cup of Nations finals in January, had seven Premier League players in their starting line-up but were comprehensively outplayed as they went down 3-0 in Guinea Bissau, \u200bwhere the margin of defeat might have been even bigger.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Franculino Dju curled home the first-half opener and captain Mama Balde made it 2-0 in the 66th minute. Alvaro Djalo added \u200ba third in stoppage time.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":21509,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[20],"class_list":["post-46876","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"The result increased the pressure on veteran coach Carlos Queiroz after they opened their Group C campaign with a loss away to Ivory Coast last week.","published_date":"","news_description":"The result increased the pressure on veteran coach Carlos Queiroz after they opened their Group C campaign with a loss away to Ivory Coast last week.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/46876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/46876\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46877,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/46876\/revisions\/46877"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=46876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}