There are few games for which the cliché of a "win-win draw" fits as well as the meeting between the Comoros and Togo on March 25, 2021. It was 0-0 from heaven and difficult to watch, but he determined that for the first time in history, the Comoros, a 900,000-strong country of three islands The inhabitants of the Indian Ocean, between Madagascar and Mozambique, will participate in the African Nations Championship.
Tonight she will open her games in the third house with a meeting with Gabon, an amazing achievement considering that she only became an official member of FIFA in 2005. "It took a lot of hard work over the years," said coach Amir Abdo. For the process. "
In terms of lost, this process began in 2014.
Until then he had been doing social work in Marseille, France, but when he received the request to come to Comoros and try to help the national team - he left everything and settled down.
The first thing he noticed was that the football infrastructure and the pool of players in the place did not exist.
The national team has never won a match in the World Cup qualifiers, nor in the African Championship qualifiers or in any other official match.
In those difficult days of 2014, her only victory was in a friendly match against the Seychelles in 2009.
The coach was lost.
"Like we won the World Cup," Photo: Getty Images
Having no choice, he realized he had to look for players with roots in Comoros in the Diaspora, and especially in France.
After finding them, the coach talked to them at length in an attempt to persuade them to join a team they did not know.
"The most important thing for me was to build a trust system with them," he told CNN.
And it worked.
Slowly, players from Europe joined, and the results came.
The African Championship qualifiers opened with an away win over Togo, followed by a home draw against Egypt, a win over Kenya, and then the historic draw with Togo.
"There is crazy happiness here thanks to this team," said Abdo, "it feels like we won the World Cup."
Click on the rivalry
Relatively, it is not far from it. Until 2014 the Comoros Islands were on the fringes of the football map. She was ranked 198th in the FIFA rankings and did not even dare to think about qualifying for a continental tournament. Tovim agreed to join this journey. "The squad invited to the African Championship best describes the impact of Abdo. Of the 26 players who came to Cameroon, 25 were born in Europe, and 22 of them were born in France. The only member of the Comoros Islands to be born in the country.
The lottery arranged for this anonymous group a not-so-simple house along with Gabon, Morocco and Ghana.
Few give the Comoros Islands a chance to advance to the next stage, but they see their inferiority as an advantage that can be exploited.
"The pressure will not be on us," Abdo explained, "but on the big teams from the big countries."
For the Comoros Islands, just qualifying for the tournament is a dream come true, and now it's just left to enjoy.
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