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 particularly 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. 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. 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. That resolve, though, may be tested going forward if the injury that led to the goalkeeper Stanley Nwabali being carried off on a stretcher is serious.

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 with a quarter of an hour remaining, they offered little beyond the speculative. This is not a great Cameroon squad, but after the failure at the World Cup, and the toing and froing over André Onana’s position in the squad, he is surely on borrowed time.

In a tournament notable for an unusual openness, both Nigeria and Cameroon had seemed like throwbacks, giants of the old African game playing in the style of a decade ago, all plugging gaps, keeping it narrow and compact and hoping for a set play or a flash of inspiration to generate something (in that sense Nigeria’s 3-2 win over Cameroon at this stage in 2019 was something of an outlier). This is a classic rivalry: since 1980, as Ghana have failed to live up to the glory days of CK Gyamfi, they have been the two most successful sides in sub-Saharan Africa, the only two African teams to win Olympic gold.

Three times Cameroon have beaten Nigerian in Afcon finals. A derby atmosphere in a stadium that was pleasingly full, a sense of a game that, no matter what the outcome, would reverberate through the generations, two teams feeling for form, unsure of themselves and their place in the modern landscape ... it was perhaps inevitable that it should be cagey.

Fabrice Ondoa, preferred again to Onana in the Cameroon goal, flapped at a ninth-minute corner and, having made an initial save as the ball was returned from the edge of the box, couldn’t quite keep out Semi Ajayi’s follow-up; VAR was there to reprieve him though, Ajayi having come back from an offside position before hooking the ball in.

That the opener, when it arrived nine minutes before the break, stemmed from a mistake was almost inevitable, but it still took awareness and unselfishness from Osimhen to make it. The Napoli striker scored only once in the group stage, missing numerous chances, but there is no doubt he is the key figure in this Nigeria attack.

Having caught Oumar Gonzalez in possession, he showed great strength to hold off the midfielder and then, with the chance to shoot, laid the ball to Ademola Lookman whose shot squirmed under Ondoa and, on the slick turf, slithered over the line as a desperate Gonzalez scrambled back.

To say that from then on it was a case of game management for Nigeria would be slightly misleading, because it would imply they changed approach; rather the safety-first probing that seems their natural style under José Peseiro continued to give them a sense of control while their threat remained limited to whatever Osimhen could forage.

Which might not have been much, but it was still more than Cameroon could muster and brought a decisive second in the final minute for Lookman as he met Calvin Bassey’s low cross with a firm sidefoot.