AFCON: Drama as Mauritania players sing anthem without music; wrong anthem played 3 times

The AFCON 2021 has no doubt been entertaining as ever, steady bringing football fandom Drama non-stop and Mauritania's opening group F fixture against Gambia on January 12, was no different.

Although The Mourabitounes lost that fixture 1-0, there was a bit of a comical but unfortunate prologue right before kick-off.

While both national team players of the Gambia and Mauritania marched out respectively to the pitch to traditionally sing their national anthems before kick off, it wasn't quite a warm moment for the Mauritabounes, as the officials played the wrong national anthem three times for the Mauritanian team to sing along to.

Owing to technical sound issues at the Limbe Stadium in Cameroon and seeing how embarrassing the situation might get, the Mauritanian players had no choice but to sing their national anthem without any music on the pitch.

The incredible was overly embarrassing, so much so Mauritanian National Team Captain and Aris Thessaloniki striker, Aboubakar Kamara was even spotted shaking his head in disbelief and utter disappointment - and one cannot blame him really.

He would never have believed if he was told prior to his team's opening fixture that his team would be only team at the AFCON 2021 to have to sing their national anthem without the music being played.

This comes after yet another blunder, occurred on earlier on January 7 in Tunisia's opening group F 1-0 loss against Mali in which the stoppage time was blown, just over four minutes before the standard stoppage time, and a controversial decision that questioned the authenticity of the AFCON VAR and CAF's match officials in general.