Co-favorites Algeria fought their way to the quarter-finals of the Africa Cup with great effort.
The tournament winner from 1990 and 2019 with the prominent goalkeeper Luca Zidane won 1-0 nV (0-0, 0-0) against the DR Congo on Tuesday evening.
The recently substituted striker Adil Boulbina (119th) scored the golden goal for the desert foxes against the Leopards, who were crowned African champions in 1968 and 1974. World Cup participants Algeria, who failed in the preliminary round of the last two tournaments, will face Nigeria in the round of the last eight on Saturday in Marrakesh. The Super Eagles won against Mozambique (4-0).
In front of the eyes of French football legend Zinédine Zidane, his son and the other players played a game in Rabat that was poor in highlights. For Algeria, Bundesliga professionals Ramy Bensebaini (Borussia Dortmund), Fares Chaibi (Eintracht Frankfurt), Ibrahim Maza (Bayer Leverkusen) and Mohamed Amoura (VfL Wolfsburg) were in the starting line-up, but the favorites struggled.
Top star Riyad Mahrez also barely came into the game and was substituted in the 70th minute, and set pieces also posed little danger. Amoura (78th) missed a rare chance. Algeria were better in extra time and rewarded themselves late. Augsburg’s Samuel Essende sat on the bench for the entire Congo game.