THE hosts, Ivory Coast start with three points!
Terrific finishes in either half – first from Seko Fofana, then Jean-Philippe Krasso – give them a reasonably comfortable victory over a game but toiling Guinea-Bissau.
On a night when winning was all-important, Ivory Coast have delivered.
It wasn’t quite as goal-laden as their 5-1 friendly win over Sierra Leone last Saturday, but Ivory Coast have now scored at least twice in each of their last four matches, hitting the net 18 times across those games.
The test will be whether they can continue that form against sterner defences.
Most of the players dropped to the turf as the final whistle was blown. That match clearly took it out of them, probably due to the high humidity.
A penny for the thoughts of the Nigeria and Equatorial Guinea players who have to kick-off in the same stadium tomorrow at 14:00 GMT, when it is likely to be much warmer.
The dominant Seko Fofana is rightly announced as player of the match.
It was his early scorcher that got the tournament off and running.
Are the hosts champion material? Tough to tell from an opening performance in which they were rarely tested.
Ivory Coast didn’t do it with the flamboyance or flourish that many would have expected when they took an early lead.
As for Guinea-Bissau, they have failed to score in their last eight matches at the Africa Cup of Nations, extending their own record for any team in the history of the competition.
It’s been more than 13 hours since they last found the net (797 minutes), Piqueti scoring against Cameroon on 18 January 2017.
Only Benin (14) and Mozambique (12) have played more matches than Guinea-Bissau (10) at the tournament without winning one.