Cote d'Ivoire

The Cote d’Ivoire national football team represents Cote d’Ivoire in international football and is controlled by the National Ivoirienne Football Federation. The team hadn’t achieved success up to the year of 1992 when they managed to win Ghana on penalties and claim the African Cup of Nations. Before that the team had finished in semifinal three times. After their achievement in 1992 Cote d’Ivoire was expected to succeed in qualifying games for 1994 World Cup but the team gave way to Nigeria. That was the end of their successful run.

In the mid-2000s a certain uprise followed and that was connected to successful performance of Didier Drogba, the team’s captain, who is the team’s top scorer (54). In 2006 the team made a significant breakthrough as they entered the World Cup and were successful in the African Cup of Nations. Their performance in 2006 World Cup in Germany can’t be called fortunate, as the team was defeated in the first two games and didn’t make it to play-off. In that game, lost to Argentina 1-2, Didier Drogba scored the first ever goal for Cote d’Ivoire at World Cups.

The achievements are not so significant in total: the team became the Champion in the African Cup of Nations in 1992, where they took part 19 times, and participated in the World Cup twice.

An interesting fact from the history of the Cote d’Ivoire national team is that they won two longest penalty shootouts in the history of international football. In the African Cup of Nations in 1992 they defeated Ghana 11-10 and in the quarterfinal of 2006 African Cup of Nations the team beat Cameroon 12-11.