Goals record for 2008 Afcon
The just ended 2008 African Cup of Nations saw a record 99 goals scored in the tournament and there was no single match decided by a penalty shootout.
The previous record was 93 goals scored in the 1998 edition hosted by Burkina Faso and in the previous tournament in 2006 in Egypt the number of goals scored was 73 and this was far much less than this year.
Of these 99 goals, 45 were scored in the first half with 54 scored in the second. Its not surprising though that more goals were scored in the second half because that tends to be the trend in football.
Just like in 2006, the top scorer was Cameroon's Samuel E'too with five goals.
The table below shows how much each team contributed to the 99 goals tally and it also shows how many goals were scored in each half.
Team | Matches | First Half | Second Half | Total Goals | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Ivory Coast | 6 | 6 | 10 | 16 | |
Egypt | 6 | 8 | 7 | 15 | |
Cameroon | 6 | 7 | 7 | 14 | |
Ghana | 6 | 5 | 6 | 11 | |
Morocco | 3 | 4 | 3 | 7 | |
Tunisia | 4 | 5 | 2 | 7 | |
Angola | 4 | 2 | 3 | 5 | |
Guinea | 4 | 1 | 4 | 5 | |
Zambia | 3 | 1 | 4 | 5 | |
Senegal | 3 | 3 | 1 | 4 | |
Nigeria | 4 | 1 | 2 | 3 | |
South Africa | 3 | 1 | 2 | 3 | |
Namibia | 3 | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
Benin | 3 | 0 | 1 | 1 | |
Mali | 3 | 0 | 1 | 1 | |
Sudan | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
So despite finishing fourth, Ivory Coast were the top scoring team with 16 goals and as noted in an earlier post, Sudan finished the tournament goalless.
The question is: will 2010 Angola go past the 100 goal mark?
Angola '10 would have to be some tournament to surpass 100 goals - but then again if the likes of Zaki and Manucho continue to develop as they are now and people of Eto'o/Drogba's quality are still around, who knows?
reply