ACCRA: Ivory Coast lived up to their billing as serious title contenders with their victory in Monday s crunch African Nations Cup game against fellow regional giants Nigeria.
Salomon Kalou produced a superb solo strike in the Group B tie in Sekondi, the Chelsea forward meandering through a packed Nigerian defense to set the 2006 beaten finalists up for their 1-0 win and nicely en route to the quarterfinals.
The Ivory Coast team was coached by Henri Michel two years ago and earlier the Frenchman, a Nations Cup veteran, watched his new Morocco team hand out a 5-1 drubbing to inexperienced Namibia.
Three of the Atlas Lions goals in this Group A match came from the boot of Souffiane Alloudi who is in danger of missing his side s next match after damaging ligaments in his right knee.
Monday s third game saw Mali beat Benin 1-0 with Sevilla s Fredi Kanoute converting a 49th minute penalty in the second of the Group B double header delayed by floodlight failure.
The stadium had earlier been lit up by a polished display from the Didier Drogba-led Ivory Coast with manager Gerard Gili reflecting: It s a good start. The players worked well. We have to continue like that.
Nigeria aren t just a good team, they re a very good team, without any weaknesses. The two sides were evenly matched.
Berti Vogts, the German who took up Nigeria s cause after his tenure as Scotland manager, dipped into the history books to put a positive gloss on this opening reverse.
We lost the first match in 2006 and we went on to qualify for the quarterfinals, but we ll have too play better against Mali (on Friday).
We lost to a very good team today, on a cracker of a goal.
Earlier, in the Ghana capital Accra, the tens of thousands who d turned up to cheer on the hosts in Sunday s curtain raiser against Guinea were nowhere to be seen as Morocco turned on the style against Namibia in a near deserted stadium.
Michel s Moroccans didn t let the handful of supporters who d turned up to support them down, Alloudi helping them race to a 2-0 lead within five minutes.
He brought up his hat-trick before the half hour mark with Tarik Sektioui putting them 4-0 up from the penalty spot.
Substitute Moncef Zerka added a late fifth with Brian Brendell getting Namibia s consolation.
Michel observed: I m very satisfied. We opened the scoring quickly and then controlled the game.
It s a sign of a good team that we didn t fall into the trap of getting complacent.
Of Alloudi s injury he said: It s early days but it looks as though we might be missing his services for our next game (against Guinea on Thursday).
It s frustrating, as he was in form.
Morocco, having made it to the final in Tunisia in 2004, were first round casualties in Egypt, packing their bags without even scoring a goal.
Reflecting back on that debacle captain Youssef Safri, who picked up the man of the match award, said: I was disappointed as a player about what happened in Egypt. I ve learned from our mistakes.
This time we want to go as far as possible. We started well and worked hard and deserved the win.
Namibia are competing at this level for the first time since 1998 and only the second time in all, but coach Arie Schans refused to use international stage fright as an excuse.
They played like schoolboys against professionals in the first five minutes, the Dutchman who took over after the death of former coach Ben Bamfuchile in late December, observed.
Tuesday s Group C program sees Egypt take their first steps along the road to retaining their title in Kumasi against Cameroon and Sudan up against Zambia. -AFP
