Cameroon's head coach Serge Mimpo was dejected as the defending champions failed to make it out of the group stages at the TotalEnergies U17 Africa Cup of Nations following their 2-1 defeat at the hands of Burkina Faso in their final Group C match in Annaba on Sunday.

The defeat meant the holders finished bottom of the group after back-to-back losses and Mimpo was lost for words trying to put the defeat into context.

"I was so confident in this team and the players were ready for the tournament. But, on the pitch, I don't know what happened. We will do our own postmortem of the tournament to know what went wrong," a dejected Mimpo said at the post-match press conference.

The tactician pointed out their finishing as the biggest area of concern, basing his immediate analysis on how the performed against Mali and the Burkinabes.

He lamented that despite creating man scoring opportunities, they still couldn't find the back of the net.

"It is our lack of clinical finishing that eliminates us. We played well, created the chances, but we missed a lot of them," said the coach.

He adds; "It is sad for all Cameroonian people. We would have loved to do better but it was not possible this time. We will continue working with the team and find the right ingredients to build these players for the future."