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2021 AFCON to start from January 9 to February 6
Hassan Shehata won the AFCON on three consecutive occasions
While Africa prepares to see the tactical battles of twenty-four coaches in the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations which starts in twelve days’ time, GhanaWeb’s Joel Eshun, in this article, celebrates the two most successful coaches in history of the competition.
The Africa Cup of Nations started sixty-four years ago in 1957 when Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia were the only competing countries after South Africa was disqualified due to the apartheid policies of the government then in power.
And it is the dream of every coach who participates in the competition to either try to equalize or beat the AFCON’s best record of three titles shared by legends Charles Kumi Gyamfi (Ghana) and Hassan Shehata of Egypt.
The closest competitor of the aforementioned legends is Herve Renard who has two trophies after winning with Zambia and Ivory Coast. However, his last attempt at the 2019 edition with Morocco ended at the knockout phase.
Taking the national team job after quitting football at an age when he could still have been playing actively as part of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah’s plan for a Ghanaian to lead the Black Stars, Gyamfi’s immediate task was to win the 1963 AFCON.
Ghana was set to host the 1963 Nations Cup and the country’s football-obsessed head-of-state, Kwame Nkrumah, was counting heavily on the Black Stars being crowned champions and the team didn’t disappoint as they won and defended the trophy in 1965.
CK Gyamfi nearly made it three out of three but lost the 1968 Africa Cup of Nations to Congo-Kinshasa.
But Charles Kumi Gyamfi finally secured the unprecedented ‘three-peat’ as the Black Stars hoisted the trophy in faraway Libya in 1982.
Thus, becoming the only coach to have won the Africa Cup of Nations on the occasions but that record lasted for twenty-eight years before Hassan Shehata joined the table of men after beating Ghana 1-0 in the 2010 AFCON in Angola.
Hassan Shehata won his three AFCON trophies in grand style with back-to-back-to-back victories with the Pharaohs of Egypt from 2006 to 2010 in his seven-year spell with the Egyptian national team, thus becoming their longest-serving manager.
Sadly, the two legends are no longer part of the living but their records will be safe in the upcoming 2021 AFCON as none of the competing coaches have won the trophy twice.
Hassan Shehata died at the age of 66 on June 23, 2013, while Charles Kumi Gyamfi joined his maker at the age of 85 on September 2, 2015.
Meanwhile, the 2021 AFCON will start from January 9 to February 6, 2022, because of the outbreak of the Coronavirus pandemic.
