Angolan forward Jacinto Dala says they deserved to qualify for the quarterfinals of Afcon 2023.
The Palancas Negras were unstoppable against Namibia as they won 3-0, with Dala involved in all three goals.
The forward ended up winning the Man of the Match, his second so far.
Dala hailed the performance of his teammates and indicated that they deserved the qualification to the quarter-finals.
“We had a good performance today. The team deserved this qualification and I’m very happy we made it happen. I will say the commitment and the involvement of all the players helped me in winning this man of the match (award),” he said.
Dala has four goals in the tournament, just one shy of the top scorer — Emilio Nsue of Equatorial Guinea.
“Scoring goals here makes me happy and I would love to continue scoring in this tournament and getting victories as well,” he added.
Meanwhile, Caf have teamed up with TotalEnergies to launch an initiative aimed at making football matches more accessible to people with visual impairments. The initiative, developed in collaboration with Touch2see, aims to offer a more inclusive match experience by putting in place special measures to enable visually impaired people to fully enjoy the action on the pitch.
The first activation took place on January 18 at the Felix Houphouët Boigny stadium in Abidjan, where Cecifoot players selected by the Fédération Ivoirienne des Sports pour Malvoyants et Aveugles (FISMA) attended the match between Egypt and Ghana.
Local players Abdoulaziz Traore (ASDVY), Youssouf Fofana (AJAS) and Kan Marius Kouame (ANAVPACI) were the first to benefit from this initiative.
Thanks to Touch2see’s tablet and live description programmes, the users were able to follow the match with an exact description of everything happening on the pitch.
The ball’s position is determined by an optical tracking system based on artificial intelligence, which presents the players’ movements with the ball, passes and shots via vibrations and haptic feedback that the user perceives by touch.
Moreover, an automatically-generated audio description displays the names of the players in action, game time, scores and fouls.