The Lions roar to quarterfinals

Tamale, Jan. 30, GNA - The Indomitable Lions of Cameroon unimpressively massacred Sudan in their third "Group C" match played at the Tamale stadium on Wednesday with a 3-0 victory to qualify into the quarterfinal stage of the ongoing MTN Africa Cup of Nations.

Though the game was boring and failed to impress most of the fans, history was set as Samuel Fils Eto'o broke the all-time scoring record by two goals, when his 21st minute spot kick put him ahead of Cote d'Ivoire's Laurent Pokou, who scored a total of 14 goals in the championship about 38 years ago.


As if the record breaking was not enough, Eto'o was also crowd the MTN Man of the Match, which gave him an extra impetus to his football career and is at the moment the leading goal scorer in the tournament with five goals.


The Cameroonians started scoring in the 20th minute when they earned a spot kick, which was neatly converted by Eto'o when a Sudanese defender brought down Job Desire Joseph in the penalty box. The confident Oto'o made no mistake with his kick as he enjoyed massive applause from the stands in anticipation of breaking the record and he made no mistake to slot the ball into the net to make him the current African hero.


The Cameroonians were again gifted in the 32nd minute when the Sudanese defence in an attempt to clear the ball rather aggravated their situation by scoring an own goal to register the second goal for the Lions.

The game from then was played mostly around the centre of field with Sudan winning most of the 50-50 balls but they failed to utilise the various chances that came their way and it was no surprise that they failed to as least get a face-saving goal as they lost their previous two matches.


The second department of the game saw Sudan playing as if a win or a draw would save them from packing home with the team doing most of the running and making frantic efforts to redeem the two goals they had conceded to no avail.


The Cameroonians from then played a relaxed game apparently to conserve energy for their next match against the winner of "Group D" scheduled to played at the Tamale venue on February 4. Eto'o registered his second in the match and the fifth in the competition when he took a pass from the centre circle and outran the defence of the Sudanese to beat the goalkeeper to score his side's third goal during time added on to end proceedings.