Football is a simple game; either a team wins, loses, or the game is drawn. However, like many other things in life, some wins are special. To alter a line from George Orwell’s Animal Farm: ‘All wins are equal. But some wins are more equal than others. And when referee Omar Abdulkadir Artan blew the final whistle at the Stade de la Paix at the African Cup of Nations, Mauritania had just got a win that can surely be said to be more equal.
Mauritania’s first win at AFCON is a culmination of years of hard work that took a country from the bottom of the international football pyramid to the wonderland where they won against Algeria, one of the powerhouses of African football.
The rise of Mauritania is not down to one single factor but is a combination of good administrators, proper use of FIFA funds, a revolution in youth football, and a resolve to always perform to the best of their abilities.
We trace Mauritania’s rise from being a minnow to a giant killer.
A nation in despair
Like many African countries, Mauritania has been involved in territorial disputes with its neighbouring countries. This has caused wars with Morocco and Algeria over the disputed Western Sahara. This had a trickle-down effect on football, as the nation suffered massively.
They entered qualifications for tournaments such as AFCON and FIFA but never won a game and were always eliminated in the first round. However, the dark days were yet to come as for a period of eight years between 1995-2003, the nation failed to win a single game.
Having such abysmal records meant that no incentive was taken by the country’s football body to improve the infrastructure, as there were no hopes that they could achieve anything meaningful.
Their lowest point came in 2010, though, when they were ranked 207th among the bottom five countries in the world. To make matters worse, the country had also seen two military coups in three years, which threw the nation into instability.
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The Rise of Ahmed Yahya
A year after they hit their lowest FIFA rankings ever, Ahmed Yahya was appointed President of the national football federation. Yahya had promised to change the footballing landscape of the nation, but considering their performance and the situation in the country, few expected to see actual progress.
Yahya faced an almost insurmountable mountain, but he took this challenge head-on. One thing he had going for him…
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