The Tottenham striker saw his side holding on for a 1-1 draw with Tunisia, which was enough to see his side through to the last eight, where they will play against Burkina Faso.
READ: Tunisia pay the penalty as Togo advance
While he was elated with the result, the lanky marksman had some less than complimentary words about the playing surface.
“Once again we are in Africa - Afcon is a big tournament for Africa - the whole world are watching this, you can’t play on a pitch like this.
“To be honest with you I’m very sorry but it’s a disgrace for our continent to be playing on this pitch when it’s on the TV around the world.”
“Those people that watch the game in Europe, they will be sending sms’s to me tonight asking me, ‘are you playing in the bush or what’, it’s a disgrace to our continent, we can do better.”
The problem arose after soil had been thrown on the pitch to sort out the wet surface which arose after several days of heavy rain - a move which was apparently not sanctioned by the Confederation of African football (CAF).
Your comments on this story...
in Mbombela?
I think Caf and Safa should move the remaining 2 Mbombela games to the royal stadium - Orlando ..!!
Matches get posponed in Europe because of bad pitches, why must this not happen to us? Mbombela was chosen for AFCON unfortunately the rain damaged the pitch. So now they capitalise on the pitch to tell us s.hit because they know everything is great in South Africa, they want to make headlines talking s.hit about us. Adebayor is nobody here in South Africa, he is somebody in Togo not here.
Fact of the matter is CAF should be flexible w.r.t the dates of the AFCON. The idea behind hosting it in January was because most African countries experience heavy rains during June esp those in the central, western and eastern region. Unfortunately for SA except in the western cape, our rain comes during the summer season thus making it very difficult to maintain the pitch with lots of games being played on it. So before people start complaining they should first know the continent they are in for them to understand the problem better. We as Africans cannot, i repeat CANNOT be seen as trying to conform to the European standards all the time. If your European Ade.. thinks we suck, to hell with them, we dont needs those tendencies here.
This is Africa the motherland, the home of precious stones, the hub of agricultural products, a place where there is the Big 5, where nature and humans co-exist.
posted: 07:49 am | Report
Why are these Kweres so jealous of South Africa? We give them access to world class stadiums, they sleep in top hotels, they have access to world class infrastructure and the get to see the beautiful ladies that competes for miss universe here is SA, I am talking about the things they can only access in Europe and USA here. After all these they still complain and tell us about Europe as if there are no bad pitches in Europe.
Matches get posponed in Europe because of bad pitches, why must this not happen to us? Mbombela was chosen for AFCON unfortunately the rain damaged the pitch. So now they capitalise on the pitch to tell us s.hit because they know everything is great in South Africa, they want to make headlines talking s.hit about us. Adebayor is nobody here in South Africa, he is somebody in Togo not here.
I agree with you Nipsy on certain points, Adebayor speaks as if the pitches in Togo are world class. The best thing to do though is to move the games scheduled for Mbombela to another stadium cause that sand makes it a bit difficult for teams to play their normal football.