AFCON 2021: The most impressive attacking actions of week 2 – tactical analysis

The second week of the AFCON 2021 witnessed some better and more entertaining games than the ones played during the first few days since those games were mostly decided by one or two goals maximum. However, this past week was marked by an awakening of most teams who finally got used to the difficult African atmosphere, weather conditions and most importantly, the players’ bodies started to cope a bit better with humidity.

This allowed viewers to see matches end with some high scores such as the Cameroon vs Ethiopia match which ended with a heavy 4-1 win for the hosts, which helped them in securing their qualification to the knockout round despite making a draw with Cape Verde in their last match.  Burkina-Faso were also able to guarantee their qualification to the Round of 16 from Group A with four points.

The end of the first AFCON week also witnessed some solid performances from Malawi who won 2-1 against Zimbabwe, but especially from Morocco who won 2-0 convincingly against Comoros. Moreover, Nigeria beat Sudan with a 3-1 final score, making sure to not drop any point in their first two games such as Morocco and Cameroon. These teams proved very early that they can go far in the competition since they caused defensive issues to all their opponents so far.

In addition to these powerful teams, Tunisia were able to bounce back on Sunday by making an entertaining performance and scoring four goals against Mauritania, proving that the Carthaginians are not giving up despite the refereeing dilemma that occurred against them in their first match against Mali.

But before delving into the best attacking actions and especially those that were successful and led to goals, it should be mentioned that Algeria’s attacking performance against Equatorial Guinea was good. Their main problems were related to finishing and to concentration in front of goal despite having some of the best African players such as EPL’s and Manchester City’s Riyad Mahrez, Serie A’s and Milan’s Ismaël Bennacer, Lyon’s Islam Slimani, Youcef Belaïli, Nice’s Youcef Atal and more.

In this tactical analysis scout report, we will be analysing the attacking actions that led to goals and those that were successful during the last few matches of the tournament, while making sure to delve into the tactics behind such actions, movements and passing combinations/ideas.

Cameroon vs Ethiopia

Cameroon’s physical playing style prevailed in their match against Ethiopia as they were able to relatively dominate the game and be dangerous whenever they reach the final third mainly using crosses from the wings or individual penetrations. Ethiopia’s defensive line wasn’t able to resist the individual physical strength of players like Vincent Aboubakar and Jean-Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting. And as you can see in the following picture, Aboubakar was the source of Cameroon’s first goal of the match when he avoided his marker and attempted a powerful shot from distance. Having the awareness of his ability to disturb the goalkeeper with the shot gave Aboubakar extra determination to shoot with power in order to score or in the worst cases, oblige the goalkeeper into giving the ball away after preventing it from reaching the net. And that’s exactly what happened before Collins Fai got the ball and crossed it to Karl Toko Ekambi who was unmarked inside the box and therefore scored the goal with a powerful header.

The second Cameroonian goal came following 12 successful passes in an action that was initiated from Cameroon’s goal before building up slowly and creating a numerical superiority on the right-wing in order to free Collins Fai who started running and waited for a pass behind his markers and at the back of the whole defensive line.