Sunday's finale at the 2012 Africa Cup of Nations was a thrilling and intensely meaningful match, particularly for victorious Zambia. The Copper Bullets capped their incredible run through the tournament with a massive upset of a talented Cote d'Ivoire squad, turning mistakes and missed opportunities by the Elephants into a triumphant occasion for the Southern African nation, which came out on top in penalty kicks by a narrow 8-7 margin.
Zambia honoring the fallen The Chipolopolo upending the heavily-favored Elephants Cote d'Ivoire's missed opportunities The failure of Cote d'Ivoire's EPL stars Submit Vote vote to see results
For the Chipolopolo, the win marked their first ever Africa Cup of Nations title and served as a fitting tribute to the 18 members of the national team who lost their lives in a plane crash in Libreville, the very city where today's match was played.
From a purely football perspective, though, the bigger story may well be the disappointing finish by Cote d'Ivoire. The Elephants didn't concede a single goal through their six matches in the tournament, becoming the first side to pull off such a feat since Cameroon came away with six clean sheets—and the trophy—in 2002.
Interestingly enough, it also marked the third time in three trips to the final that the Elephants ended up in a penalty shootout, winning once before in 1992 and losing in 2006.
Cote d'Ivoire could easily have avoided such a fateful finish had it not been for Didier Drogba's shocking failure to put through a penalty kick in the 70th minute. Drogba's attempt sailed high over the goal, thereby breathing new life into the opposition through what turned out to be another 50 minutes of scoreless football.
Bwalya it was who had enough confidence to appoint Renard, then assistant to Ghana manager Claude LeRoy, as coach of Zambia in 2008, and again to re-sign him in 2010.
He reckoned Zambia had been lucky to play all their games up to the final across the Gabonese border in Equatorial Guinea, explaining: "It was only possible for us to return to Gabon (to honour the 1993 team) if we made the final, that gave us incredible strength."
Drogba had no such trouble finding the net once the match came down to penalty kicks, though the same could not be said for Kolo Toure and Gervinho, whose shots were saved and missed, respectively. And so, once again, the English power (or at least the team loaded with Premier League players), once dominant on the African continent, was vanquished by a plucky underdog, bringing some measure of ironic justice to an even that will not soon be forgotten on the streets of Lusaka.
