Okay, so I got this idea the other day, wanting to keep track of the African Nations Cup standings myself. Not just checking scores online, but actually building my own little table, you know? Just a small personal project to follow the tournament more closely.
Getting Started – The Hunt for Info
First thing I did was just open up my computer and start searching around. Needed the basics, right? Which teams qualified, how they were grouped up. It’s always a big event, this AFCON thing. I remember Egypt winning it like a bunch of times in a row back in the day, think it was ’06, ’08, ’10? Crazy run. And Ivory Coast snagged the last one, beating Nigeria in the final. Nigeria’s won it a few times too, definitely a team to watch.
Found out that getting into the main tournament is a whole process itself. Teams from all over Africa go through qualifiers. Something like 48 teams split into groups, playing home and away, and only the top ones make it through. Quite the journey before the real competition even starts.
Setting Up My Tracking Sheet
Once I had the list of teams and their groups, I thought about how to actually lay it out. Didn’t need anything fancy. Fired up a simple spreadsheet program – could’ve used pen and paper, honestly. Decided on the classic columns:
- Team Name
- Played (Games Played)
- W (Wins)
- D (Draws)
- L (Losses)
- Pts (Points)
Standard stuff you see everywhere, like on those sports sites. Easy to understand. I set up a separate section for each group.
Filling in the Blanks
This was the main part of the work – finding the match results and updating the table. Every match day, I’d look up the scores. A win gets 3 points, a draw gets 1, and a loss gets 0. Simple maths. So, after each game, I’d go into my sheet:
For the winning team: Add 1 to Played, 1 to Wins, 3 to Points.
For the losing team: Add 1 to Played, 1 to Losses, 0 to Points.
If it was a draw: Add 1 to Played for both teams, 1 to Draws for both, and 1 to Points for both.
It took a bit of discipline to keep it updated regularly, especially when multiple games were happening. Sometimes finding the scores right away was a bit tricky, had to check a couple of places to be sure.
The Result – My Own AFCON Table
After a few rounds of matches, it started looking like a proper league table. It felt pretty cool having my own record there, built from scratch. Didn’t rely on just refreshing a webpage; I was actively tracking it. It wasn’t a massive undertaking, just a fun little exercise to stay engaged with the tournament. Seeing the points tally up and the rankings shift after each game – definitely made watching the matches more interesting. Gives you a good overview of how everyone’s doing at a glance.
