Ivory Coast coach Fae not carried away by Senegal success

Ivory Coast caretaker coach Emerse Fae says his side will not get carried away by their stunning victory over Senegal in the Africa Cup of nations last-16 on Monday, and that the focus now turns to a quarterfinal with either Mali or Burkina Faso.

The Ivorians won 5-4 on penalties after a 1-1 draw to dump the reigning champions out of the tournament and inspire a remarkable reversal of fortunes after they scraped into the last-16 despite a humiliating 4-0 loss to Equatorial Guinea that resulted in the sacking of coach Jean-Louis Gasset.

Should The Elephants advance past the next round, one of Guinea or DR Congo will be waiting in the semifinals, a tie they will feel they can win But Fae is not looking that far ahead.

“Since last Monday and the defeat against Equatorial Guinea, I have been taking the matches one-by-one, and today, yes, we beat Senegal,” Fae said.

“Finally, we eliminated Senegal, we found a state of mind, that’s a good thing, but we’re definitely not going to get excited. We have come so far that we are not going to get excited, we are going to continue to work, continue to work on our solidity, keep this state of mind which will give us the strength to perhaps go for the title.

“But for the moment, we are focusing on the quarterfinal. We will calmly look at who our opponent will be, and we will take the matches one after the other.”

Midfielder Jean-Michael Seri was instrumental in the win over Senegal and he has also called for calm among his teammates.

“We did not start the match well, and after we conceded the goal, we responded to that, and we took control of the match with a team performance. It doesn’t matter how we qualified, what matters is that we qualified,” Seri said.

“We were just calm. At halftime, the coach asked us to continue in the same way. We were very solid and united and fought for our nation. The important thing is that we qualified for the quarterfinals.”