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Angola's Edourdo Wilson (red jersey) blocks Tunisian road Dylan Bronn REUTERS / Suhaib Salem

The Tunisia of French coach Alain Giresse was held in check by Angola (1-1) in Suez in group E of CAN 2019. Faced with Palancas Negras volunteers, the Eagles of Carthage, very disappointing in the game, have never found the solution to win. They are the only 2018 globalists who did not win on this first day.

From our special envoy to Suez,

On the heights of the Suez stadium, the view of the city has offered a much better show sometimes than this first meeting of Group E CAN 2019 between Tunisia and Angola (1-1), Monday, June 24. The boredom was often at the rendezvous of this game refreshes at times by the sea breeze and the tenacious fervor of hundreds of Tunisian fans. They were certainly expecting more from their team who had a hard time getting into their match and holding their favorite rank of this group in which also house Mali and Mauritania.

Tunisia, a globalist in 2018, made its first shot of the match after the first quarter of an hour, and there was only one center from the side in the first period, while the coach of the Eagles, Alain Giresse, had aligned a 3-4-3. That said, the difficulty of Wahbi Khazri and company to take the measure of an opponent who could have hurt them if he had been a little more inspired offensively.

Mateus relaunches Palancas Negras

Tunisia got their penalty on their first action really built to score. When the middle Ellyes Skhiri finally decided to project, he found himself in the Angolan surface to serve Naïm Sliti before that one has a fault on the poorly controlled intervention of Paizo. Youssef Msakni, very little visible since the beginning of the match (and no more after that), offered the opener by transforming the penalty (34th).

The rest of the game was not very exciting between two teams who worked to close the spaces taking the least risk. While we wondered whether Mateus, the best scorer of Angola in the playoffs (4 goals), was on the field, the latter was at the origin of the equalizer. On a heavy hit, he pushed the goalkeeper Farouk Ben Moustapha, who released the ball in the feet of Djalma Campos who was happy to reset the counters (73). Stunned, Tunisia ended the game in pain before Angolans invigorated by their goal but very clumsy in the last move.

The Eagles of Carthage drop points in their first game and are already under pressure before playing Mali Friday, June 28.

► To read also: CAN 2019, Calendar, results and standings of the Africa Cup