Consensus split over the Africa Cup of Nations
Police escort the Ivory Coast team bus
The disturbing scenes which saw three members of Togo’s traveling party shot dead have obviously put the Africa Cup of Nations under serious scrutiny, begging that question as to whether other teams should follow Togo’s lead and pull out of the competition.
Reports from today’s Telegraph suggest that Didier Drogba spoke with Adebayor in the aftermath of the shooting, and does not feel that he is in the right mental state to play in the competition.
And, Togo’s Alaixys Romao was quoted as saying:
“If it had been Ivory Coast or Cameroon; or if Eto’o or Drogba had taken a bullet, the competition would have been stopped immediately.”
Whilst over here, the views of Arsene Wenger and Everton’s South African midfielder, Steven Pienaar, suggest that the show must go on.
Wenger said this:
“If you organise the European Championship and you have an incident like that – it can happen and has happened – you do not want all your players suddenly to move home.”
“We won’t be asking Fifa to release our players. I don’t believe you can just stop a competition for any incident because that would be a reward. It would mean any competition could be stopped at any time. The competition has still to go on if the security is well respected in the country.”
Thoughts echoed by Pienaar:
“An incident like this is disappointing but I think the tournament should go ahead.”
What do you think? Must the show go on? Or should Togo’s lead be followed?
Let us know with a comment.
2 responses so far
John // January 11, 2010 at 5:11 pm
Show must go on…if it stops, it gives any gunman the power to do it again. It is tragic and should be remembered, but not stopped. That is just one humble opinion.
Anthony Mwangi (Nairobi) // January 12, 2010 at 11:10 am
At least its re-assuring to know that we still have level headed coaches in Europe like Arsene Wenger. An isolated and unfortunate incident in a remote part of Angola, should not lead to a blanket condemnation of a whole Country, a whole Continent and even a whole tournament.
The unfortunate incident that befell the togolese team can befall on any other team any where in the world. it is rather unfortunate that some media houses and some club coaches in Europe have chosen to over dramatize the whole incident. It is also a shame that the Togolese prime Minister, instead of behaving like a mature African leader, he chose to withdraw the Togolese team from the tournament. Is he trying to tell the rest of the world that such an incident can not happen in Togo? instead of blaming Angola, we should in fact give the country our full support taking into consideration that this is a country that has experienced considerable stability for only 8 years after suffering 27 year of internal conflict. Kudos to Angola for being able to stage such an exciting tournament.
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