At a quick glance, football appears to be a fair game, pitting 11 players against 11 in a sporting contest with rules and regulations. On paper at least, any team could beat any other.
Except, of course, we know that’s not the whole story. Put an EPL giant like Manchester City or Liverpool up against a Division Two struggler in the FA Cup, and it’s an unequal struggle from the start.
Yes, Cup upsets do happen, but they are rare when the gulf between the sides in everything from club resources, quality, training, experience and expertise is so wide. The giant will win 99 times out of 100.
So instead, lesser sides give themselves different targets. Keep a clean sheet for the first 20 minutes. Let them know they’ve been in a game. Win your individual battles. Stick together, fight for the badge, and let’s see where it takes us. A gutsy performance can make a defeat feel like a win.
And in AFCON so far, it’s very much been a feather in the cap of the underdogs.
Only a late Mo Salah penalty saved Egypt from defeat against Mozambique. Cape Verde hit a shock winner in stoppage time to beat four-time AFCON winners Ghana 2-1. Nigeria’s Super Eagles were held 1-1 by Equatorial Guinea, who scored with their only shot on target.
2019 winners Algeria were held 1-1 by Angola despite a string of chances, and the Indomitable Lions of Cameroon could also only draw 1-1 against Guinea, despite their opponents playing with 10 men for the second half after having a man sent off.
Burkina Faso grabbed their first win in an opening game at AFCON in 13 attempts when they beat Mauritania 1-0, and there was an historic first AFCON win for Namibia’s Brave Warriors, who overcame North African powerhouse Tunisia 1-0 with an 89th minute header from Deon Hotto.
For the neutral, it’s always good to see the form book go out of the window – it makes for a more exciting tournament, and the joy of an unfancied team achieving a phenomenal result is great to behold.
The Bible is full of stories where victory is snatched from the jaws of defeat – from the Old Testament tale of David and Goliath (still an expression regularly used today) to the greatest comeback of all time: the resurrection of Jesus Christ three days after the Crucifixion.
Christians know all about the danger of complacency, the downfall of the powerful, and the hope of the underdog. As The Message translation of the Bible colourfully puts it in 1 Corinthians 1: 27:
“Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don’t see many of “the brightest and the best” among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these “nobodies” to expose the hollow pretensions of the “somebodies”? That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. Everything that we have – right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start – comes from God by way of Jesus Christ. That’s why we have the saying, ‘If you’re going to blow a horn, blow a trumpet for God.’”