The opening matches have been an eye-opener – Jalel Kadri
Tunisia’s head coach, Jalel Kadri, says the opening matches of the TotalEnergies CAF Africa Cup of Nations Cote d’Ivoire 2023 have been an eye-opener.
Kadri compared Mozambique’s impressive performance against Egypt and Ghana’s shock defeat to Cape Verde in their opening matches.
Speaking from the Amadou Gon Coulibaly Stadium in Korhogo, where the 2004 champions will face Namibia in their opening Group E match on Tuesday, Kadri said playing against Namibia in the opening match was in no way an advantage as the tournament has already shown that there are no small teams in Africa.
“Namibia is a serious opponent, and we don’t have any easy team. The results in the opening rounds have shown that there is no small team in Africa as we saw, so we need to show them respect and play to our best ability. The opening matches have shown that”, cautioned Kadri.
Tunisia is making its 21st appearance in the competition, with this edition being the 16th in a row – a record in the tournament’s history thus far.
An unfavorable statistic that the coach will have to discard from his mind is the fact that Tunisia has failed to win any of their last four opening matches of the TotalEnergies CAF AFCON.
On his tournament objectives, Kadri was very modest in his response, saying that the team had prepared enough to go as far as possible in the competition.
“We will try to go as far as possible. We have good quality teams, so we will try to win each match and go as far as possible. We must be respectful to all opponents. Africa’s best teams are present, so ours is to do our best in every match and take it game by game,” concluded the coach.
Kick-off at Korhogo’s Amadou Gon Coulibaly Stadium is at 17h00.
