DR Congo qualified for the final of the African Nations Championship (CHAN) by beating Guinea 5-4 on penalties.<\/p>\n
After an entertaining goalless 90 minutes Jonathan Bolingi scored what he thought was the winner in the first period of extra-time.<\/p>\n
But Guinea’s Ibrahima Sory Sankhon made it 1-1 in the final seconds of the game to send the tie to penalties.<\/p>\n
In the shootout Congo’s Ley Matampi saved from Mohamed Youla to send Florent Ibenge’s side to the final.<\/p>\n
The victory secures DR Congo’s place in Sunday’s final to decide the winners of CHAN 2016.<\/p>\n
They will face either Mali or Ivory Coast, who meet in Thursday’s semi-final.<\/p>\n
DR Congo’s best chances in the first half fell to Meshack Elia, who sent a freekick wide of the target, and then to Doxa Gikanji, who scored a spectacular goal against Rwanda in the quarter-finals.<\/p>\n
This time though, his shot from the edge of the area was pushed away by goalkeeper Abdoulaziz Keita.<\/p>\n
Congolese defender Padou Bompunga will miss the final after he was booked just before half-time giving him a suspension for two yellow cards in successive matches.<\/p>\n
Bolingi had chances to score in normal time but one of his efforts found the legs of a Guinean defender and then he failed to connect fully with a more acrobatic effort.<\/p>\n
In between those efforts, Sankhon got his head to a dangerous looking attack from Guinea, but keeper Ley Matampi saved for DR Congo.<\/p>\n
With just three minutes left on the clock, Guinea were saved by the woodwork when Gikanji unleashed another fierce shot.<\/p>\n
The first goal of the match eventually came in the 102nd minute as substitute Guy Lusadisu crossed from the byline and Bolingi found the target with a superb diving header.<\/p>\n
With just seconds before the final whistle, Sankhon found the equaliser with a shot from just inside the box to send the match to penalties,Guinea won their quarter-final against Zambia on penalties with keeper Keita saving and then scoring the crucial spot kicks.<\/p>\n
But this time around he was upstaged by his opposite number Matampi, who saved two of the post-match penalties including one in sudden death from Youla to earn the victory.
\n–
\nBy: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
DR Congo qualified for the final of the African Nations Championship (CHAN) by beating Guinea 5-4 on penalties. After an entertaining goalless 90 minutes Jonathan Bolingi scored what he thought was the winner in the first period of extra-time. But Guinea’s Ibrahima Sory Sankhon made it 1-1 in the final seconds of the game to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[142,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-186877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-football","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=186877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186877\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=186877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=186877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=186877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}