14 February 2002
It began with a convoy of purple mopeds, ended with a heart-stopping penalty shoot-out and had at its nadir the man widely regarded as Africa's best ever goalkeeper being dragged from the pitch by riot police with his track-suit bottoms around his ankles.
Mali 2002, whatever else it was, was never short of colour or incident, and the people of the world's fifth-poorest nation will never forget the month football came to town.
There were defects aplenty, not least with the football, but Mali proved the doubters wrong, and demonstrated that it had the enthusiasm and capacity for the tournament many doubted it possessed.
For four nights Bamako heaved in giddy celebration as locals took to the streets to celebrate first draws against Liberia and Nigeria, and then, ridiculously, gloriously, victories over Algeria and South Africa.
"It hasn't been like this since we demonstrated for democracy," a painted-faced local enthused. "But I think the people were less happy then."
There are those who will say that oe60 million is a heavy price to pay for a few miles of roads, some street-lighting and four mass-produced Chinese stadia in the provinces that are already resembling white elephants, but what price this month of joy?
"You can't feed all of the people all of the time, but you can make all of them happy for a month," a local journalist told me. "Mali has known three great events in my lifetime - independence in 1960, democracy in 1993 and now the African Nations. How can that be wrong?"
And then came the events after the match at Kayes. Quite why the western city with a claim to be the hottest in Africa was ever chosen as a host venue remains a mystery - perhaps if you bought three Chinese stadia you got a fourth free - and the truth is that it was a disaster.
A lack of accommodation left teams to fly in and fly out on the day of games; journalists forced to sleep on the floors of bars and restaurants were left fuming; and the police over-reaction to a benign pitch post-match invasion was an outrage.
It was nothing, though, to the disgraceful scenes before the kick-off of Mali's semi-final against Cameroon. Cameroon coach Winfried Schafer and his goalkeeping coach Thomas Nkono wandered, innocently enough, onto the pitch to watch the other semi-final on the big screen at one end of the Stade du Mars 26.
Police moved to stop them, Nkono waved a hand dismissively, and then suddenly found himself handcuffed and dragged down the tunnel by around a dozen officers. Schafer protested, a policeman picked something, apparently dropped by Nkono, from the pitch and raised it in the air, and the crowd went wild.
The gesture, whatever Schafer may diplomatically have claimed, was provocative and intimidatory, and should have been condemned out of hand. Malian president Alpha Omar Konare at least had the good grace to apologise; not so CAF.(ACONS)
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