The-Shot.Net Writers Club - Preview Group A: Tunisia, Rwanda, Congo DR, Guinea

If you believe in the assessments derived from the sportsbook odds, hosts Tunisia have been handed the easiest group filled with total outsiders including pre-tournament lowest ranked debutants Rwanda.

But those three opponents are the type of tournament unpredictables, who can come up with anything, may it be positive or negative surprise.
Best example are always the DR Congo, who were the surprise in 1998 only to be the disappointment two years later. They miss their most prominent striker Nonda and have had their usual preperations marred by financial difficulties. But if they can grow a unit they can at least reach the quarter finals.

Guinea, like most West African football powers out of the second row, have a lot of talent but perhaps not the necessary depth in their squad. Not all positions are filled with first class professionals like we know it from Cameroon. But prepared well and with a little luck they are as capable to surprise as Congo DR or Mali and dangerous enough to give the hosts headaches.
Rwanda are debutants and normally lack the experience. A handful of players has found professional refuge at Belgium but they will depend on reaching an organisational level that prevents them from conceding easy goals. Normally teams of this level have no chance at the Nations Cup because the level that more professional squads reach during the more extensive preperations is much higher than that of hastily composed groups for qualifyers.
But with late arriving professionals the big ones now need longer, normally their first group matches, to find real impact.
And anyway there are always exceptions - think of the brave performance by Congo (Brazzaville) at the Nations Cup 2000.

Tunisia the hosts are torn between being well prepared to brush aside those opponents quite easily and the nervousness that has grown out of the experience of 1994, when they hosted the tournament with high expectations, and it were Mali and, ironically, Zaire to kick them out in the first round.
They desperately want a successful Nations Cup ´to undermine their World Cup 2010 bid, and the 1994 example has shown the negative impact of a disappointing host team on the whole tournament. It has to be hoped that the pressure on refereeing is not to high and the poor Guineans do not suffer a repeat of their 1998 campaign when they were 'helped' out against hosts Burkina Faso.