CHAN: CAR still not giving up to qualify despite Mauritania defeat – Ngato

Central African Republic coach Sébastien Ngato put up a brave face following their 1-0 TotalEnergies CAF African Nations Championship (CHAN) defeat against Mauritania at Benjamin Mkapa Stadium in Tanzania on Saturday.

In a tensely contested Group B clash, the Mourabitounes finally carried the day after Ahmed El Moctar’s ninth minute goal turned out to be the winner. The victory was Mauritania’s first of the tournament after a poor start—and only their second-ever victory in CHAN finals history—while leaving CAR facing an early exit after back-to-back defeats.

“I am proud of the level shown by our players. We still have chances in the rest of the competition. We learned lessons from this match against Mauritania and will try to use them later to give a good image of Central African football,” Ngato insisted as quoted by CAFOnline.com.
“We created chances in attack, but the opponent was stronger than us and scored in the first half early in the match. We need to focus on the mistakes we made and will try to correct them in the future.”

On CAR’s chances to reach the knockout stages, Ngato remained defiant: “We still have chances to qualify for the next round. We will give our best in the next two matches to go as far as possible.

“We had chances to score and couldn’t take them. We tried to reach the opponent’s goal, but what happened happened. We can’t say everything was bad, and our players were bad too. We will work before the next match to correct what can be corrected.”

For CAR to qualify, they will need a win in their final match and help from elsewhere.