Nigeria, Cameroon and Senegal all won African Cup of Nations qualifiers this weekend to stay at the top of their groups.
Côte d’Ivoire, Togo, Angola and Tunisia, four of the five teams that qualified for last year’s World Cup, also won. Ghana, the other World Cup participant, automatically qualifies for the 2008 tournament as host and faces Brazil on Tuesday in a friendly in Stockholm, Sweden.
Nigeria played under coach Berti Vogts for the first time on Saturday, and Nwankwo Kanu scored in the 75th minute to give the Super Eagles a 1-0 win over Uganda in Group Three.
Vogts guided Germany to the 1996 European Championship title and also coached Kuwait and Scotland.
Achille Webo scored a pair of first-half goals to lead Cameroon over Liberia 3-1 in Group Five.
Webo scored twice in the first 24 minutes to put the hosts ahead 2-0. Francis Doe pulled Liberia within a goal before halftime, but Idrissou Mouhamadou added an insurance goal in the 87th.
Senegal got three goals from Mamadou Niang in a 4-0 win over Tanzania in Group Seven. Diomansy Kamara also scored, and El Hadji Diouf set up two of the goals.
”The essential thing is to come in first -‒ and tonight we did that,” Niang said.
Nigeria and Cameroon each lead their groups with nine points each. Senegal leads its group with six. Only the 12 group winners and three runners-up advance to the African Cup finals.
Emmanuel Adebayor, who received death threats before Togo’s match, scored two goals and set up another for Adekambi Olufade to give his team a 3-1 win over Sierra Leone in Group Nine.
”Thank God I scored two goals,” Adebayor said. ”I do not know what will happen to me if I had not scored those goals.”
Kallon Mohamed got one back for the visitors.
Angola crushed Eritrea 6-1 on Sunday in Group Six with Flavio Amado da Silva scoring two goals and Pedro Mantorras, Ze Kalanga, Antonio Mendonca and Paulo Figueiredo adding the others.
Hussam Ghali scored a goal in each half to lead Egypt past Mauritania 3-0 on Sunday and move it three points clear atop Group Two.
Issam Jomaa scored all three to lead Tunisia over Seychelles 3-0 in Group Four.
Also this weekend, it was: Botswana 1, Burundi 0; Côte d’Ivoire 3, Madagascar 0; Lesotho 3, Niger 1; Mauritius 1, Sudan 2; Equatorial Guinea 3, Rwanda 1; Kenya 2, Swaziland 0; Burkina Faso 1, Mozambique 1; Algeria 2, Cape Verde 0; Gambia 0, Guinea 2; Mali 1, Benin 1; Libya 2, Namibia 0; Chad 0, South Africa 3; Republic of Congo 0, Zambia 0; and Zimbabwe 1, Morocco 1.
The Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) match against visiting Ethiopia was postponed because of last week’s deadly clashes in Kinshasa.
”We’ll set another date after we’re in a more secure situation,” said Constant Omari, the president of the DRC’s soccer association. ‒ Sapa-AP