As boos rang around the rapidly emptying Stade de l’Amitié, Gabon’s left-winger Denis Bouanga wept. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, after another underwhelming display, walked straight off the pitch, head bowed, shoulders defensively hunched. A goalless draw against Cameroon put Gabon out of the Africa Cup of Nations and made them only the fourth hosts in 31 tournaments and the first since Tunisia in 1994 to fail to make it out of the group stage.
They had their chances, packed into two brief spells at either end of the game. For five minutes. Gabon ripped into Cameroon. Bouanga was lively and brought a backpedaling stretching save from Fabrice Ondoa with an opportunist free-kick. But it was Aubameyang who had the best opportunity. When Bouanga crossed low from the left in the fourth minute, it seemed impossible he should not touch in his third goal of the tournament. Four yards out, with an open net, he slid his shot wide. Five years ago, it was at the same end of the same ground that he missed a penalty in the quarter-final shootout as Gabon lost to Mali; this miss you suspect, will haunt him for longer.
Once Cameroon had settled, though, the game settled into a pattern familiar from previous Gabon games. They are a largely unimaginative side, heavily reliant on Aubameyang, and that makes them predictable. Again and again they went long – and again and again Cameroon won the header or picked up the second ball. Goals in each of the first two games had covered over Aubameyang’s lack of impact. Perhaps his isolation was a result of José Antonio Camacho’s tactical approach, but neither was he an obviously inspirational captain.
Not until injury-time did Gabon produce another serious threat, Bouanga, probably Gabon’s best player in the group stage, cutting in from the left and hitting a low shot that bounced back off the post to Didier Ndong. The Sunderland midfielder’s follow-up bobbled awkwardly, but Ondoa reacted superbly to push the ball up and over the bar.
And so Gabon were out, unbeaten but largely unmourned, by the wider world at least. Their football had been joyless and unimaginative, a drab imitation of the dynamic, powerful side of the last time they hosted the tournament in 2012. The reaction of the Gabonese public is harder to read. There were boos after the opening draw against Guinea-Bissau and again on Sunday night, with fans streaming from the ground from about the 80th minute onwards. At least, though, they were in the ground to start with.
Various opposition figures had called before the tournament for a boycott in protest at Gabon staging a tournament at a reported cost of almost $800m when the October budget cut funding for health and education. That has not obviously materialised. The 38,000-capacity Stade de l’Amitié in Libreville was barely 10% full for the start of the opening ceremony but by half-time in the opening game was at perhaps 80%. The opposition newspaper l’Echo du Nord nonetheless pronounced it “Le grand flop!”
The crowd for the second game, the draw against Burkina Faso was a little under that, but it was near enough full on Sunday night. Crowds have been low at games not involving the hosts, but then they usually are at Cups of Nations; if anything, thanks to the prevalence of Malian, Senegalese and Burkinabe expats, they’ve probably been slightly better than normal.
If there hasn’t been notable evidence of a boycott, though, neither has there been much enthusiasm – certainly nothing to compare to five years ago. The reasons are hard to pin down. Is it tournament fatigue, a sense that this isn’t new or novel any more, not the once in a lifetime event it seemed in 2012? Is it because the team has been so unengaging? Or is it, as the opposition would insist, the continuing ramifications of August’s disputed election.
Numerous people, including one government official, have said privately that they want the tournament to be a failure to increase the pressure on the president, Ali Bongo. An anti-government demonstration scheduled for the day of the opening game fizzled out, but three activists were arrested on the day of Gabon’s draw against Burkina Faso for anti-tournament protests in the city centre. They will appear in court on Wednesday.
Camacho said before the tournament that a strong performance could unite the nation. His team, though, has failed and as the tournament goes on before a largely indifferent public, the questions about the wisdom of agreeing to host it will seem ever more pertinent.
