Nigeria soar into Afcon quarter-finals as Lookman vanquishes Cameroon.Perhaps in knockout football, nothing ever matters apart from the result. You go through, you go out, the rest is noise. But that is especially true when the tie in question is the biggest rivalry in modern sub-Saharan African football. It was not the prettiest game, but it was never going to be, particularly given a pitch slippery with dew (and perhaps the 25 minutes of watering it took before kick-off).
Not many people are going to be watching the full 90 minutes back with childish wonder. But it doesn’t matter. Nigeria go on to face Angola in the quarter-finals of the Africa Cup of Nations; Cameroon go home.
Nigeria were the better team. Victor Osimhen led the line tirelessly and with intelligence. Ademola Lookman took his two goals well. Alex Iwobi was the dominant figure in midfield. At the back, William Troost-Ekong was a colossus, entirely dominant against Frank Magri. That’s three clean sheets in a row now for Nigeria and the grumbles of fans and journalists are beginning to subside into grudging respect. Keep it tight and, where there is Osimhen, there is hope. “It was a hard game, an emotional game,” said the Nigeria coach, José Peseiro, “but we played with heart and controlled the game.”
Cameroon’s tournament essentially consisted of flurries in the final few minutes of games when panic drove them to unexpected heights. They troubled Senegal and came through the chaos of the finale against the Gambia but here, even after the introduction of Vincent Aboubakar, they offered little beyond the speculative, mustering no shots on target and only one corner. This is not a great Cameroon squad but Rigobert Song, their manager, is surely on borrowed time after the failure at the World Cup.