ou could pretend Ivory Coast won the Africa Cup of Nations because of the balance and flexibility of the midfield shape introduced by Emerse Fae, and it would be partially true. Jean Michael Seri, Franck Kessie and Seko Fofana excelled in both the semi-final and the final. But really it was about something far less explicable, far wilder, far more thrilling than that. Ivory Coast won the Cup of Nations because nobody would work out a way of knocking them out. They lost
