BEWITCHING:

Ten years ago AFCON 2012 threw up one of the biggest surprises in international footballing history when Zambia, 10th favourites at 40-1 before the competition started, shocked favourites Ivory Coast (and others) by winning the final in Libreville via a penalty shootout. It was the culmination of a heady three-week adventure that made no sense analytically, but complete sense from a storyline point of view. In April 1993, most of the incredibly promising Zambian national squad - their eyes on a place at the 1994 World Cup spot and victory at the 1994 Cup of Nations - were killed when the military plane transporting them to a World Cup qualifier in Senegal, crashed into the sea shortly after taking off from a refuelling stop in Gabon.

Although a rebuilt team, based around star striker Kalusha Bwalya (who had avoided the 1993 disaster due to the fact he was, as a PSV Eindhoven player, travelling to Senegal from the Netherlands) finished as runners-up at AFCON 1994, Zambia never made it to the 1994 World Cup and are still waiting to appear at one. By 2012, Zambia had slipped back firmly into the second tier of African footballing powers, often capable of getting through the group stages in many editions of the AFCON, but usually despatched by one of the continent's big boys, invariably due to a lack of goalscoring threat. In 2010 Zambia made it through the group stage in first place ahead of Cameroon, Gabon and Tunisia, but then went out on penalties to Nigeria in the quarter-finals after a 0-0 draw. Disappointment once again. On to 2012, then, and try again.

AFCON 2012 was full of players who had graced the club scene in Europe for much of the previous decade and would do so in the future, from Kole Toure to Didier Drogba, from a 22-year-old Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang to a 22-year-old Andre Ayew. Zambia's squad, in contrast had five players who played domestically, eight from the South African top-flight as well as five from 2009 CAF Champions League winners TP Mazembe from the Democratic Republic of Congo. The only European-based player in the squad was 21-year-old striker Emmanuel Mayuka. He was about to go on to big things, but no-one in January 2012 saw it coming.

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