Tunisia Staying in Tamale

January 31st, 2008 | by: Rami |

Sure the game wasn’t anything to write home about but it wasn’t a bore draw either. We started out looking for a goal but you can’t expect the players to take unnecessary risks when they know in the back of their minds that all they needed was a tied scoreline to secure first place and ensure that they stayed in their hotel to celebrate and prepare for the next match. As it is we could have conceded goals quite easily if it wasn’t for great goalkeeping from Hamdi Kasraoui. I had my doubts in him before the tournament but honestly so far he’s been practically beyond reproach. It’s not like we have a viable second option anyway with Aymen Mathlouthi suffering from a little injury that is keeping him out right now. Hopefully Hamdi continues to be a good safety net back there.

Amine Chermiti came the closest to scoring and showed a tiny bit of rust on that open header but gave a respectable performance. Some players would not have been able to play it back across goal like that and his intention was good but the execution was off as he just pushed it a little too hard. In 90 minutes he showed what he can offer in terms of sheer vivacity. Sometimes his feet move so fast that the kid just looks like a blur on the field… Kamel Zaiem also gave a decent performance in which he showed his free kick accuracy as well as having the presence of mind to test the Angolan goalie from distance (something no one else really tried apart from Issam Jemaa on a wild shot).

I am also happy with Chaker Zouaghi who won practically all of his duels today in midfield, a much improved performance from the first two games. No one made any real glaring mistakes and another positive is that our players came out of the game without incurring a suspension for our next match. That will put a smile on the faces of a technical staff which has proved it likes to switch things up depending on the opponent. In just three games we’ve confirmed what fans of Tunisia football knew all along: The Tunisian player is extremely tactically aware, with a great sense for what it takes to get the desired result.

So 3 games, 5 points, 5 goals, 3 conceded, and 3 different lineups so far. That’s a lot of numbers but the most important is the number 1 as we finished first in a tough group that included no pushovers. If you had told that to a lot of people before the tournament started, they wouldn’t have believed you and I don’t blame them because our preparations left a lot to be desired. Still though, here we are and things go back to zero now. We must start fresh as every match is a final from here on out. They say you don’t win the African Cup without defeating tough teams and who could argue with that.

Our first opponent will be none other than Samuel Eto’o Fils‘ Cameroon. I will save material for the preview when the time comes but let me say that I am confident that we have the tools to knock them out. So I say to our boys, enjoy the result tonight and get back to work tomorrow bright and early. If we want to go far, we must stay concentrated. Thank you for making sure the star and crescent continue to wave in the second round of Ghana 2008.

For more analysis, visit Beurkman who has Al Shawt Al Thaleth in its entirety. Here is what the players and staff had to say.

The Highlights

Tun-ango – long interviews
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iman

YAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY………I COULDNT STOP SCREAMINNNNN.WOW IM SOOOOOOOOOOOO HAPPPPYYYY…..even though if we thnk we can beat cameroon with the way we played the previous games then youll be expectin a abig miracle so i hope they get thier acts together and play proper football…anyway MABROOOOOOOOOOOOOK
JC

Any idea how to watch the game against Cameroon in the US?
Rami

Hey JC, if you want to watch it online here’s the world cup blog guide on how to do that for free:

http://www.worldcupblog.org/african-cup-of-nations/guide-to-watching-the-africa-cup-of-nations.html

or you can go to http://www.telesud.us and pay 14 dollars for live and on demand access to all the second round action. as for TV, some might know more than me in that department as I’ve yet to watch one using that method. I know ART America shows the games on a time delay. So if a game is played at 6:30 in Ghana that’s when they’ll show it in America. Others can chime in if I’m incorrect. If you got more questions, keep em coming.
Bman

Out of curiosity, when Jaidiws subbed out, why do you guys think Felhi replaced him instead of Ghezal. I saw Ghezal play in the World club cup and he seems very solid, but Felhi is good too, I was just curious, we havnt seen Ghezel yet.
JC

Thank you Rami. I will try Telesud. I am not so sure if I can get ART through my cable provider. The tunisian “marabout” predicted, for free, 2-1 for Tunisia!!!!
http://www.worldcupblog.org/daily-dose/daily-dose-2108.html Daily Dose 2.1.08 – World Cup Blog – African Cup of Nations 2008

[...] Carthage Eagles staying put (Tunisia Blog) [...]
Rachid

Rami and JC: ART shows the game both live (i.e., 2:30 pm Eastern time) as well as rerun (same night either at 7 pm or 11:30 pm ET, probably the latter since Egypt/Angola play first on the same day). You can also see it on TV5.

Thanks for the highlights, Rami. They made me gain some confidence in Kasraoui; I have been very hard on him, but I think he did a very good job. Same goes for Chermiti, there is no question he is one hell of a player. I have a feeling we will beat Cameroon!
http://tunisia.worldcupblog.org/ Rami

On Eshawt Al Thaleth they had the Abdelhak Ben Chikha (the Tuniso Algerian coach of Club Africain) talking about Chermiti and I laughed my ass off when he said: “Chermiti! C’est une arme BIOLOGIQUE hadheka!” Lol, we’re waging biological warfare on Cameroon’s slow and aging backline. Too funny, you can tell he would have loved to coach that kid. I’ve also heard him say “C’est un poison, il est veloce ce gars la.” All with that distinct Algerian french accent. Very entertaining stuff. I love his enthusiasm. And I love Chermiti too
joaquin

I saw it. Poor match.
http://tunisia.worldcupblog.org Rami

I hope that’s not all you saw of the African Cup. Our best performance so far was against South Africa. Tune in for the quarterfinal matchup and I doubt you’ll be disappointed.
http://gambiafootballsupermarket.blogspot.com/ Gambia Football Supermarket

The northerners are showing us the way
Skander

For those who are having trouble watching the games here is how I watch them for free live on the web from Japan (albeit with mediocre resolution). I use a streaming software called sopcast, where you can see the ART transmissions in Arabic.

1. Download sopcast from internet (www.download.com)
2. Install it.
3. Log in anonymous
4. On Channel list, you may find the Channel “Koura Tounsia”. It works very fine and all matches are there.
5. If you don’t find the channel, here is the address: sop://broker.sopcast.com:3912/29995

Be careful if you try to watch this from a network where peer to peer (i.e. bitorrent and co) transmissions are prohibited, like some large corporate domains or some (not all universities). This software mught get you in trouble.

Cheers
have fun
Inchallah Marbou7a