By CHRIS TOTOBELA, Grocott’s Mail sports reporter
The 2022 Fifa World Cup in Qatar has been unkind to the African teams. Only Morocco has managed to make it to the last eight of the five representatives.
Despite beating in-form Brazil, Cameroon failed to make it out of the group stages. Tunisia had the better of the defending champions, France, with a narrow one-nil victory but also was unable to make it to the last 16.
Ghana’s captain Andrew Ayew squandered a perfect opportunity to put the Black Stars ahead in the opening minutes of their clash against Luis Saurez’s Uraguay and lost the game by two goals.
Senegal made it to the last 16 but came up against tough opposition in the form of England, who ran riot and humiliated the African champions by three unanswered goals.
The entire African continent will put its hopes in Morocco and pray they get past Christian Ronaldo’s Portugal. Morocco’s defence stood very firm against Spain and will be tested again when they meet free-scoring Portugal in their quarterfinal clash.
In other quarterfinals games, the Netherlands will face Argentina, and Croatia will take on sizzling-hot Brazil.
In the biggest clash of these quarterfinals games, the defending champions, who have the best attack in the world in Kylan Mbape, Antonio Griezman, and Olivier Giroud (to mention a few), come up against one of the most formidable and well-organised sides of this year’s world showpiece, England, who also have good finishers like Marcus Rashford, Foden, their all-time leading goal scorer and reliable captain Harry Kane, Saka and many more. This will be a clash of the titans, and whoever wins this tie might go all the way to the final.
