WAFCON 2022: Moroccan showpiece the biggest yet
On the verge of the 2004 Women’s Africa Cup of Nations final, Cameroon’s head coach Carl Enow Ngachu should have been focusing on his side’s match up against Nigeria. Instead, he was dealing with Cameroonian officials who had come to the stadium to bring to him and his players their earnings from the tournament, in cash.
“We were preparing to go onto the field and they brought us our cash. We had to just put it in our pockets, we didn’t even have time to put go back up to the hotel room. We could not concentrate. You were afraid that it might be stolen.”
Needless to say, the Indomitable Lionesses fell to a crushing 5-0 loss to Nigeria. But even the champions were not free from financial difficulties. Following their victory, the squad had to go on strike, refusing to return to Nigeria, to get the bonuses that they were owed from their own federation.
Ngachu can laugh about his experience now, because things have changed. Instead of being forced to strike to get paid, the Cameroonian women’s side travelled to Morocco via private jet and will have access to world class facilities as they finish up their preparations for the 2022 edition of the Africa Cup of Nations that kicks off on Saturday.
The growth of women’s football in Africa
The improvement in facilities is a reflection of the growth of women’s football in Africa and a reflection of the anticipation of what will be the biggest women’s AFCON to date.
Not only has the tournament been expanded from eight to 12 teams, increasing the competitiveness, the anticipation of the competition has increased. Burkina Faso, Togo, Botswana and Burundi are all making their debuts and have all made strides recently to catch their more experienced competitors.
Like in Europe, the women’s game in Africa has seen rapid expansion and improvement over the last four years. For the first time in history, national leagues have begun professionalising with South Africa and Morocco paving the way for the rest of the continent.
Even in countries where the leagues are not fully professional, they are on that path. In Cameroon, the pathway to being paid as a female footballer is rapidly becoming viable and the days of waiting for cash payments are gone. Despite its apparent slide backwards, the Nigerian Women’s Professional League is still considered one of the destination leagues in the continent.
The crowning achievement of club football was the inaugural CAF Women’s Champions League, hosted in Egypt last year which brought together the champions of each region of the continent. For the first time in history, clubs from across the continent were able to compete against each other and it did not disappoint.
That improvement in club football has translated onto the international stage. Not only have players been able to get big moves to Europe from the tournament, but clubs like Mamelodi Sundowns and ASFAR Rabat are now seen as the backbone of their respective national sides.
Competition at its highest
What makes this AFCON far larger than its previous editions though is that it is anticipated to be the most competitive in its history. The Super Falcons of Nigeria have been serial winners on the continent, notching nine wins in eleven attempts, and are arguably the most dominant football team in history. But that absolute dominance seems to be coming to end.
In 2018 the Super Falcons came their closest to losing their crown since 2012. They lost to South Africa in the group stages and relied on penalties not once but twice to knock out Cameroon and South Africa to retain their status as the Queens of Africa. Since that final, the Super Falcons failed to qualify for the Olympics, losing out to Ivory Coast and then followed that up by losing the invitational Aisha Buhari Cup final to their rivals South Africa.
Those losses are not a reflection on the Super Falcons regression, but rather the steady improvement of their competitors. Since 2018 the Nigerian squad has been strengthened by the introduction of diaspora talent like Ashleigh Plumptre (Leicester City), as well as bringing in seasoned American coach Randy Waldrum. And Nigeria still boast Africa’s biggest star in Asisat Oshoala. However, Nigeria’s competition has improved.
Nigeria are no longer in a class of their own
Chief among Nigeria’s challengers is South Africa. Banyana Banyana and The Super Falcons are quickly forming one of the most competative rivalries in modern football and while the Nigerian success is propelled by stars, South Africa’s success comes from years of fruitful planning from head coach Desiree Ellis.
Hired in 2016, Ellis has been building South Africa’s road to success ever since. The former Banyana captain was central to South Africa’s run to the final in 2018 where they pushed Nigeria to their absolute limits. Since then, the South Africans have gone from strength to strength. With a team now full of seasoned professionals from South Africa and abroad, they are a team that has built a reputation for being tactically creative and defensively superb.
But the South Africans can also call upon some of the most exciting talent in Africa up front. Thembi Kgatlana was the top scorer in 2018 and the Atletico Madrid forward is aiming to do one better this time and fire her country to their first ever title. Backed up by fellow European based attackers Refiloe Jane, Jermaine Seoposenwe and a spine of Sundowns players, Banyana Banyana have all the tools to make 2022 their year.
Cameroon come into the tournament with a generation at their peak. Experienced campaigners like Gabrielle Onguéné, Genevieve Mbeleck, and Ajara Nchout Njoya headline a team that, like South Africa, is looking to go one better than their multiple final appearances. Having made the semi-finals of every edition since 2002, the Indomitable Lionesses are now backed by a president in Samuel Eto’o who not only had rapidly improved the national league but has given the team the resources to compete at the very highest level.
Throw into the mix nations like Zambia, led by double-Olympic hat-trick scorer Barbra Banda and hosts Morocco who have completely transformed their women’s football over the last five years, means that for the first time in the competition will have five or six teams that have a realistic chance of winning tournament. Even without the traditional heavyweights of Ghana and Ivory Coast who were both knocked out in qualifying by Nigeria, the competition is at its highest ever.
Additional incentives for success.
But what makes this tournament more competitive than anything else is the promise of a World Cup spot for the top four sides at the tournament. Additionally, two of the losing quarterfinalists will go into the World Cup playoffs.
With the added incentive of a World Cup, teams have stepped up their preparations for the tournament. Morocco have been in camp for nearly a month prior to kick-off. Teams like Cameroon and Senegal have already played each other twice and have travelled to France for pre-season camps.
In fact, the two favourites in Nigeria and South Africa have had arguably the worst preparation with neither team having played a warm-up game against an international team yet. Nations in Africa have finally woken up to the potential of women’s football and all of them see the World Cup as the best route to improving their game as quickly as possible.
In an interview with the On The Whistle Podcast in the build up to the tournament, Rosella Ayane of Tottenham Hotspurs highlighted the importance of the World Cup saying, “I always say as soon as I knew that it was the top four that would qualify, that’s a minimum. Going into this tournament, that’s an absolute minimum. I remember saying to my roommate every morning when we woke up. Top four, minimum.”
Morocco have pulled out the stops to host the tournament in Rabat and Casablanca, with every team being housed and training in stellar facilities. Gone are the days when players regularly saw cockroaches in their rooms at one-star hotels, or teams being forced to train with only a couple balls for 23 players as it was in Ngachu’s day.
The tournament is set up to be the greatest yet, and now it’s down to the teams to deliver on that promise.
