Newcastle’s star holding midfielder, Cheick Tiote, who scored the goal of the season at St. James Park on Saturday, to tie the scores at 4-4 against Arsenal, was on the winning side last night for his country.
Cheick Tiote – played the whole game last night
Tiote won his 16th cap last night, and played the whole game in the 1-0 win, and the winning goal was scored in the first half by Didier Ya Konan.
We must say we were just a little concerned that he may pick up an injury, but the good news is that the 5’11” midfielder seems to have come through the game unscathed.
Phew!
The game was played in Valence, France, and so Cheick didn’t have too far to travel either, which is again good news.
The game served as a tune-up game for the third round of the 2012 African Cup of Nations qualification, which are due to start next month.
The Elephants were dominant for large parts of the first half, but were not able to add to their 1-0 lead, and Mali came back well in the second half, and were awarded a penalty.
But Mamadou Samassa was unable to convert the pot kick, with the goalkeeper making a good save, and that gave Ivory Coast the win.
Newcastle hero Cheick will be back on Tyneside today. 😀
Comments welcome.
9 comments so far
cyprus
Feb 9, 2011 at 11:41 AM
Comment #1Ed, slow down with the posts. Moving from one place to the other too fast…
cyprus
Feb 9, 2011 at 11:43 AM
Comment #2Copy pasting for the last time. Apologies.
On transfer policy. I think we are about ready to do a MUFC. Not kidding. We have a very strong backbone in Enrique, Jonas, Tiote, Jowey, BA, Ireland, Nolan, Colo, we don’t need a major shake-up. So, we must make sure NONE of the above leaves and then just buy one or two (only) superplayers(e.g. a CF), like we did with Tiote and BA. Seriously, what we need now is fine-tuning, not an overhaul. Don’t forget that in the above list I didn’t mention players who may come good (e.g. Grous, Ranger, Best, Simpson)
cyprus
Feb 9, 2011 at 11:45 AM
Comment #3And the rest of it:
On Darren: Darren who??
On Pavlychenko: Depends on price, would much rather have a 25 year old Latin American proven talent.
On Pardew: In truth, I think AP is a bit confused at what’s going on around him. So. let’s not ‘Love him’ (one of Ed’s previous titles) before he manages to keep us up. What was said during the break? If we are to believe JB, it has little to do with AP. He said they wanted to avoid a cricket score, that’s it! No mention of inspirational speeches etc, like we see in hollywood. I believe what JB said, having played football, it just sounds so right.
I don’t want to push AP (in fact I am desperate to ‘love him’ as Ed puts it!) but he hasn’t exactly pulled off anything yet: The ship was steady to start with, he weakened us in the Jan window (no right winger anymore, stupid to ‘sell’ Routledge), he took us on at eighth, now we are tenth…
Stuart
Feb 9, 2011 at 11:50 AM
Comment #4When I said shake up like cyprus I meant we could see alot of fringe players moving on and being replaced, Smith, Lover, Perch, Guthrie, Xisco etc.
I agree that if we keep our star players we could be a force.
But if we clear out some of the aging players and dead weight it’ll free up money, not neccisarily from transfer fees but from not having to pay high wages, eg Smith.
If we can replace players like them with young hungry players who can challenge our first team it will make us a much stronger squad overall.
lewman
Feb 9, 2011 at 11:56 AM
Comment #5we should keep guthrie imo as he is still young and he will improve, aswell as being a good passer and he is not bad at free kicks from close range. i just think he needs to play a bit more forward than at cdm.
boater
Feb 9, 2011 at 12:17 PM
Comment #6“would much rather have a 25 year old Latin American proven talent”
Isn’t that what they call an oxymoron?
dunzer1990
Feb 9, 2011 at 12:46 PM
Comment #725 year olds can be proven…
BOOM BOOM CHEICK CHEICK THE ROOM 😉
cgrizzly87
Feb 9, 2011 at 1:35 PM
Comment #8oooh crap so we lose Tiote this time next year? I HATE the African competition, right in the middle of the prem season 🙁
TIO TIO TIOTE
Feb 9, 2011 at 9:34 PM
Comment #9What a player. end of.