In the wake of Democratic Republic of Congo’s 3-0 victory over Mali, the latter’s coach, Djibril Drame has praised the winners for the tremendous performance.
In the mandatory post match press conference held shortly after the medal and trophy presentation, Drame admitted, DR Congo was on a different planet;
DR Congo deserves the victory. They are a different team from the others we played against.
Midfielder Elia Mechak master minded the one sided win with a man of the match performance scoring a brace before Jonathan Bolingi Mpangi capped the icing on the cake.
He however cast the blame game to the individual errors caused by his team;
All the three goals came as a result of individual errors.
I am not really disappointed with the performance of my team, taking into consideration that we had two weeks to prepare for the tournament.
The quality of the players has been phenomenal.
Mali now sets target of winning the CHAN tournament in Kenya come 2018.
At the previous CHAN in South Africa in 2014, we were eliminated at the quarter finals.
This time we were losing finalists. Why not win it the next time in 2018?
We will continue working hard. I give merit to my players and I think some of them will be promoted to the senior team.
DR Congo has now won the tournament two times (2009 and 2014).
Tunisia won the second edition (2012) before Libya claimed the third one.