Africa: Coach Amir Abdou Celebrates Mauritania's First CHAN Point

20 January 2023
Confederation of African Football (Giza)

Mauritania coach Amir Abdou was all smiles in the post-match press conference as he saluted his players for a great performance in the side's goalless draw against Angola in their first Group D game at the TotalEnergies CHAN 2022 in Algeria.

The Comorian coach, who is now unbeaten as Mauritania coach in 14 matches since he took over last year, secured the country's first ever point at the tournament.

"I am very happy for the players. They worked so hard to get this one point. Angola is a big team and they showed that in their first game against last year's finalists Mali so we knew that it would be a difficult game. We did our best today," explained Abdou to the media.

"We had a couple of chances to score tonight but it was difficult. It was a very tricky game. Angola have talented players and as I said before, they have the best striker in the tournament [Depu - Laurindo Dilson Maria Aurélio] but we did our best to deny them from scoring and so we shall celebrate this point."

"About our offense, we missed opportunities in front of goal. We were not pragmatic enough. These are things that we need to evaluate going forward. We could have done better. This is a long part of the journey."

"Our goalkeeper [Namori Diaw] stood out today. We tried to change things up. Angola tried to look for second opportunities to score but eventually, we had a strong goalkeeper. He kept a clean sheet and that is important for us."

Diaw made two crucial saves on the night to ensure that Mauritania bag their first ever point at CHAN in three editions. Mauritania lost all their past six games at the continental tournament including three apiece at the 2014 and 2018 editions in South Africa and Morocco in that order.

Abdou said, "This reflects the project that we are building in Mauritania, and we want to improve one day at a time. We are doing our best and things are looking good for us. We must continue being consistent."

Mauritania will face two-time finalists Mali in their last Group D game on January 24 at the Miloud Hadefi Stadium in Oran, Algeria at 1600hrs GMT.

Read the original article on CAF.

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