Fatbear's Sporting Diaries: Association Sportive Police 0-1 ASN Nigelec

November 15, 2022

Eleven Sports have recently expanded the number of African countries to have matches live streamed on its platform, which now includes Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Congo Republic, Mauritius, Burundi, Niger, Liberia, Gambia, Malawi and Mali. The coverage is usually pretty basic, with just one camera in the main stand, no commentary and usually no team line-ups. Sometimes there isn’t even any score or times during the matches.

From today’s potential offerings I chose to watch a game from the first round of fixtures from the Niger Super Ligue. News and updates on football in Niger are not easy to find on the internet, and even in the on-line websites of Niger’s newspapers, there is seldom any reports on the domestic football.

Of the global football results websites, Flashscore does give fixtures, results and the league table for the Niger Super Ligue, but there are no other details such as the scorers, line-ups or any of the usual statistics. Of the other usual staple sources, Soccerway’s last update was in 2012, whilst Sofascore and Worldfootball.net completely ignore the league.

At least Wikipedia has some limited information, from which it is possible to glean that the league started in 1966, Niamey based Sahel SC and Olympic FC have won the most titles, with 13 and 12 respectively, and that last season’s champions ASN Nigelec, also from the capital, won the league for the first time.

Niger is the second largest land-lock country in Africa, with 80% of its territory being in the Sahara, and achieved independence for France in 1960. The capital Niamey is in the south-east corner of the country and has a population of almost one million inhabitants. Maradi is the second largest city, located in the south-central part of the country, whilst Zinder is the third largest city and a former capital. Both Maradi and Zinder lie close to the Nigerian border.

Niger’s national team are currently 121^st in FIFA’s world rankings. They have made a promising start to their Africa Cup of Nations qualification campaign, with draws against Tanzania and Uganda, although they still have to play top-ranked Algeria, and so face a battle for the second qualification spot. They have never qualified for the final stages of the Africa Cup of Nations nor the World Cup.

No players from Niger appear to have played professionally in England, although Daniel Sosah will be familiar to readers of these diaries, playing in Belarus for Isloch. Two players from Nigelec were in the most recent Niger squad, namely centre-back Abdoul Razak Seyni ( 19 caps ) and midfielder Boubacar Goumey ( 4 caps ). AS Police have not had any players selected for the national squad in the past 12 months.

There are 14 teams in the Niger Super Ligue, with the Champions representing Niger in the CAF Champions League, and the Cup Winners playing in the CAF Confederations Cup. The bottom two sides are relegated and replaced by the top two sides in the First League. Nine of the sides in the division play in Niamey, with newly promoted Jangorzo playing in Maradi, Akokana FC and Urana FC in the northern Saharan city of Arlit, whilst Espoir FC play in Zinder and JS Tahoua in Tahoua. Matches in Niamey are mostly played in either the 50,000 capacity Stade General Seyni Kountche, the National Stadium, or the smaller Stade Municipal.

At least coverage of the CAF Champions League is decent so ASN Nigelec’s progress has been documented. Niger was the 24^th ranked country in CAF’s club coefficients so it didn’t look too promising when Nigelec were drawn against SOA Renaissante, the 2021/22 runner-up in Guinea, the 10^th strongest league in the continent.

However, two goals from midfielder Boubacar Goumey gave the Nigerien side a 2-1 home win, and the surprise was completed with a 0-0 draw in Conakry, despite a second yellow card to Goumey 20 minutes from the end.

Nigelec’s reward was a tie in the Second Qualifying Round against Moroccan giants Raja Club Athletic of Casablanca, who featured in the diaries in September, drawing 1-1 at home with Moghreb Atletico Tetouan in the Botola Pro 1. Morocco have the strongest rated league in Africa.

The Nigeriens unsurprisingly rarely troubled Raja in the first leg played in Niamey but it took contributions from three of the players that had impressed in September to turn the tie in favour of the Moroccan side. With 25 minutes remaining, Gabon international striker Axel Meye headed back for Zakaria Habti’s to shoot first-time left-footed from the edge of the area and for the ball to creep inside the far post. Raja effectively sealed the tie in the last minute of the first leg with a top quality second goal, as Soufiane Benjdida ran onto Habti’s cute chip to volley into the roof of the net.

The second leg was mostly one-way traffic, with Raja unable to make a breakthrough, as Meye in particular missed several chances through a combination of good saves from keeper Kanta and poor finishing. The winning goal eventually arrived 10 minutes from the end, full-back Nihiri scrambling home a corner from 6 yards for Raja to secure a 3-0 aggregate win.

After elimination from the CAF Champion League, Nigelec dropped down to the CAF Confederation Cup play-off round to face another tough draw, this time against Egyptian side Pyramids, FC who had finished runners-up in the 2021/22 Egyptian Premier League ( ranked the Second strongest league in Africa ). They were playing in the Confederation Cup as the Egyptian league hadn’t finished by the deadline for entrants to the CAF competitions to be confirmed, and Pyramids were in 4^th place at that time.

Incredibly, Nigelec caused a huge shock in the first leg, as defender Seyni’s glancing header from a free-kick was the only goal in a 1-0 home win. However, the normal order of events was resumed in Cairo, as Pyramids eased to a 3-0 win to progress to the Group stages.

Today was Nigelec’s first match since their elimination from continental competition as they faced AS Police in a match played on the artificial surface at Stade Municipal in Niamey. The temperature at the 16.00 local time kick-off ( 15.00 UK ) was around 34 degrees.

Police had finished the 2021/22 season in 8^th place with an 8-7-11 record. As the name suggests they are sponsored by the Niger Police, and won the league title in 2008, when they also won the Niger Cup. However, further details on the club seemed to be impossible to find, so I had no idea who any of their players were !

Police were not playing in all-blue, but instead wore bright yellow shirts with black shorts. Nigelec had worn an all reddish/orange strip in their CAF matches but today were in an all sky blue kit with red sleeves and splash on their shorts. From a distance it looked like they were wearing blue bibs over red tops !

As expected, there was just one camera covering the game, with no commentary or team line-ups but at least the score and time were on display in the top left corner of the picture. There were 30-40 people watching from the open stand on the far side from the camera at the beginning of the game, rising to over 100 by the finish. However, it was impossible to tell how full the main stand was, although from time to time, a spectator or two would stand up in front of the camera.

Nigelec pressed from the kick-off and won the first corner of the match after 90 seconds, but the delivery was poor and easily cleared.

Negelec created the first chance of the match in the 5^th minute when their number 18 ( Ibrahim ? ) was put in space on the left but his shot from just inside the area went narrowly wide. AS Police responded in the 9^th minute when their number 18 beat Nigelec’s covering defender ( number 4 - Shuaibu ) to advance on goal, but his attempt for the far corner was pushed away by the Nigelec keeper onto the head of an advancing forward ( number 9 ) and over the bar for a goal-kick.

Two minutes later Nigelec’s centre-forward failed to control a low cross along the edge of the Police 18 yard line but the ball reached number 17 ( Koura ? ) whose left-footed shot on the turn was tipped over the bar by the Police custodian.

The visitors continued to have the edge, a dangerous free-kick into the 6 yard box wasn’t dealt with by the Police defence, but the keeper dived onto the loose ball, and shortly afterwards the keeper was called into action to claim a bouncing long throw.

After the early flurry of activity the match descended into one of few chances with the pace of play being mostly leisurely, presumably due to the late afternoon heat.

With just over 5 minutes to go to the interval, Nigelec had a couple of long range attempts blocked by the thin yellow line, before the Police scrambled clear, so it was deservedly 0-0 at the break.

Neither side could made much of an impression in the second half, with the most exciting piece of action being Police’s number 9 volleying high and wide in the 51^st minute. To use a few cliches, the Police had put handcuffs on Nigelec’s creative players, as both sides searched for clues on how to open the scoring.

Just under 10 minutes remaining Goumey burst past a couple of would be tacklers but his toe-poked shot was straight at the keeper and unconvincingly cleared away for a corner. Police then wasted 2 corners before Nigelec eventually got out of jail four minutes from full-time.

Goumey’s ball across the edge of the Police penalty area took a couple of deflections, and with the visitors appealing for handball, many of the players stopped playing. However, the referee was unimpressed and Nigelec’s number 20 ran to collect the loose ball by the goal-line. Police’s number 4 covered his run but despite the Nigelec player heading away from the goal, he needlessly chopped down the Nigelec player to give away an unnecessary penalty. You could say it was criminal defending !

Number 9 ( Mahamane ? ) sent the keeper the wrong way from the spot to give the visitors the lead, which they then comfortably held onto to claim three points from their opening fixture.