{"id":17778,"date":"2013-02-04T12:52:35","date_gmt":"2013-02-04T10:52:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/burkina-faso-boots-togo-out-of-africa-showpiece\/"},"modified":"2013-02-04T12:52:35","modified_gmt":"2013-02-04T10:52:35","slug":"burkina-faso-boots-togo-out-of-africa-showpiece","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/burkina-faso-boots-togo-out-of-africa-showpiece\/","title":{"rendered":"Burkina Faso boots Togo out of Africa showpiece"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Burkina Faso scored midway through extra time for a 1-0 win over Togo and a place in the semifinals of the African Cup of Nations on Sunday.<\/p>\n<p>Jonathan Pitroipa was unmarked from a corner in the 105th minute to head past an out-of-position Kossi Agassa and in off the crossbar, taking the Burkinabes through to the last four for just the second time \u2013 and first since they hosted the tournament in 1998.<\/p>\n<p>The goal settled a poor match on the rugged, sandy and much-criticised surface at Mbombela Stadium and ended the campaign of Emmanuel Adebayor\u2019s Togo, which was playing in its first African Cup quarterfinal.<\/p>\n<p>Burkina Faso plays Ghana back at Mbombela in Nelspruit in the semifinals.<\/p>\n<p>Nigeria faces Mali in Wednesday\u2019s other last-four encounter in Durban.<\/p>\n<p>Adebayor had two of the best chances in regulation, but his header was cleared off the line in the 47th and he couldn\u2019t beat Burkina Faso goalkeeper Daouda Diakite when clear on goal in the 78th.<\/p>\n<p>Before this tournament, Burkina Faso had only made it out of the group stage once in seven appearances: in that run to the semis at home 15 years ago.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was a dream that came true,\u201d Burkina Faso\u2019s Belgian coach Paul Put said. \u201cWhat can you say? We are very happy. We didn\u2019t expect this result.\u201d \u2013 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.france24.com\/en\/20130203-burkina-faso-togo-semifinals-football-africa-cup-nations\" target=\"_blank\">AP<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Burkina Faso scored midway through extra time for a 1-0 win over Togo and a place in the semifinals of the African Cup of Nations on Sunday. Jonathan Pitroipa was unmarked from a corner in the 105th minute to head past an out-of-position Kossi Agassa and in off the crossbar, taking the Burkinabes through to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[3258,830,885],"class_list":{"0":"post-17778","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-mysport","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-sport","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17778\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}