Onana through to AFCON's last 16

It is currently 19:20 on Tuesday, 23rd January 2024.

Andre Onana will keep playing in the Africa Cup of Nations after Cameroon made it to the round of 16 with an exciting win of 3-2 against Gambia.

Manchester United's goalkeeper was not called upon to play for the second time in three Group C games. Instead, Fabrice Ondoa was selected to begin the game in the goalkeeper position.

The goalkeeper for Nimes did his job well in helping Cameroon delay Gambia's first goal of the tournament. However, in order for Onana's team to advance, they had to win. The first half ended with no score, but they started the second half strong. Georges-Kevin Nkoudou came close to scoring when he hit the crossbar, but the referee didn't award a penalty when a defender caught his heel.

Karl Toko-Ekambi felt the tension and managed to score a goal for Cameroon by heading the ball past Baboucarr Gaye, the goalkeeper for Gambia. This happened in the 56th minute of the game. The cameras captured Onana, who wasn't playing yet, and Rigobert Song, his coach, hugging in celebration.

At that moment, Cameroon seemed to be on track for qualifying. However, the situation quickly changed when Ablie Jallow (who was playing for Gambia) swiftly made his way towards the goal and successfully scored a tying volley by jumping up in the air. This happened in the 72nd minute of the game and thus, Cameroon's prospects of moving forward in the tournament appeared uncertain.

It seemed like Onana and his team had lost the game when Ebrima Colley scored the second goal for the underdogs with only five minutes left in the regular game time.

The lead that Gambia had didn't last long, as James Gomez accidentally scored an own goal to make the score equal again in the 87th minute. Even though Onana's team needed to find a way to win, it took until the beginning of injury time for Christopher Wooh to score the winning goal with a header. This brought a great deal of excitement and happiness to Cameroon's fans, players and staff.

More excitement occurred in the match when Gambia scored yet again. However, at the time it appeared that Cameroon would be eliminated, a VAR inspection revealed that the goal scorer, Muhammed Sanneh, had deliberately used his hand to score the goal.

The unstoppable Lions made it to the next round of the competition as the second-place team in Group C, while Senegal finished first with a perfect score of nine points by winning their final match against Guinea with a score of 2-0.

Congratulations, Andre! Best of luck in your upcoming match against Nigeria this Saturday at 8:00 PM GMT.

On the evening of January 23rd, 2024 at 7:20 PM.