stands<\/a> and the midfield duo of Seko Fofana and Jean Micha\u00ebl Seri controlling the tempo.<\/p>\nHowever, Nigeria took the lead against the run of play in the 38th minute thanks to Troost-Ekong's header, the Super Eagles' first shot on goal of the match.<\/p>\n
Ivory Coast almost hit back early in the second half, when a bouncing ball fell to Max Gradel's feet from close range – only to see his effort blocked by Calvin Bassey's left leg and roll harmlessly between the Stanley's hands. Nwabali.<\/p>\n
Eventually the pressure was on, with Ivory Coast scoring from a corner to end proceedings and send the entire stadium – including Drogba – into enthusiastic celebrations. Kessi\u00e9 takes advantage of suspicious marking to head a corner towards goal, which slips into the hands of Nwabali in the goal.<\/p>\n
The home side continued to push for the winner and came close when Haller attempted a spectacular overhead kick, but the ball went wide of the goal.<\/p>\n
The most important goal came after Adingra beat Ola Aina and delivered a quick cross. Haller welcomed the ball from the left with a deft touch that headed into the bottom right corner of the net. <\/p>\n
Nigeria threw caution to the wind for the rest of the match, with Portuguese coach Jos\u00e9 Peseiro sending several attacking substitutes to support Victor Osimhen, who worked alone up front for much of the hot evening.<\/p>\n
But the hosts' defense held firm to secure a famous victory that will no doubt have Abidjan and beyond partying well into the night.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur team had a fantastic tournament, but today Ivory Coast was better,\u201d said Nigeria coach Jos\u00e9 Peseiro. “Our team didn't show its level. That's the truth. It wasn't the same work as in the previous rounds.”<\/p>\n
Information from Reuters contributed to this report.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ivory Coast 2-1 Nigeria (11 Feb, 2024) Game Analysis\u060c Ivory Coast won the Africa Cup of Nations on Sunday after a 2-1 victory over Nigeria at the Alassane Ouattara Stadium in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. S\u00e9bastien Haller scored the winner for the hosts in the 81st minute with an instinctive finish after excellent work from Simon […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1002,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[727,1115,5743,246,10596,10597],"class_list":["post-25239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-sports","tag-analysis","tag-coast","tag-feb","tag-game","tag-ivory","tag-nigeria"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25239"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25239\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25240,"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25239\/revisions\/25240"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}