Plucky Guinea Bissau show resilience
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Baciro Cande’s men are living the ultimate fairy tale story and indeed it has continued in Gabon after Juary Marinho Soares scored a stoppage time goal to force a 1-all draw on Saturday in the opener.
The mental toughness displayed on this memorable day when they made their debut at the biggest football showpiece in Africa
has thus far earned them respect in some corridors of football.
Forward Frederick Mendy who turns out for Ulsan Hyundai in Korea told supersport.com that people should ignore and underrate Guinea Bissau at their own peril.
“When you are a small country, people start to put you down but we know what Guinea Bissau can do. This is the first time that we are at Afcon and no one knows about us but we shall keep working,” he said after the game.
It is this same spirit that saw them mount a challenge in the qualifiers that they say will propel them to the quarterfinals but at the moment they will take one game at a time.
He said, “We are very happy for the supporters of Guinea Bissau. We tried to stay in the game from the beginning. We did not give up and then we got the late equalizer, this is very good for us.”
“Now we shall go and rest and then prepare for our next game which is against Cameroon.”
Everything is possible in football according to Mendy and all this talk is backed by their shock turnaround in the Afcon 2017 qualifiers where after losing their opening two fixtures, they stunned Kenya 1-0 in both legs before edging Zambia 3-2.
Now they are dreaming about a place in the last eight but their performance in their next game will say a lot in their destiny towards their ambitions.
Guinea Bissau face Cameroon on January 18 at the Stade de l’Amitie before taking on Burkina Faso in their last Group A on January 22 in Franceville.
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