The surprises just keep on coming in the first round of the ACN. Yesterday Gabon dispatched highly-rated Cameroon 1-0 behind a Daniel Cousin goal in the 17th minute.

In the other Group D matchup, Zambia and Tunisia split the points with a 1-1 draw. A fair result by all accounts with both goals coming in the first half.

Group A play resumes this afternoon with Mali facing Algeria followed by Malawi and Angola. Malawi leads the group after trouncing Algeria 3-0 in the opening game of the tournament.

While it sounds as though the Cameroon/Gabon game was filled with terrible terrible soccer by any standard, but it did produce some very entertaining match reports.

From Reda Maher on Yahoo UK:

Cameroon were dreadful and Gabon – who only had three real shots on goal all match – did not even play particularly well, making plenty of defensive errors and with keeper Didier Ovono as shaky as he was agile.

He continues:

[Highly rated Monaco defender N’Koulou] was directly responsible for the only goal of the game, failing to clear a simple ball that led to Rigobert Song mis-clearing Roguy Meye’s clumsy ball into the path of Cousin, who could not believe his luck at being handed the freedom of the penalty area to drill into the bottom left.

That’s right, we have a misclearance that led to a misclearance. It’s like when you’re driving and you stop short at a light because you were admiring a cute puppy on the corner and the guy behind you has to stop short but it’s alright because he doesn’t hit you, but then the person behind him can’t stop in time and BAM – you’re losing 1-0 to Gabon.

For the goalscorer Cousin, this could be the start of an exciting 2010. On January 6 he secured a loan move from Hull City – where he was behind Jozy Altidore on the depth chart – to Queen’s Park Rangers in the Championship division. QPR currently sits in 10th place but only four points behind 6th place Swansea. The 3rd through 6th place finishers compete in a playoff for promotion to the Premier League.

And lastly, I cannot ignore this fantastic closing note from the Yahoo UK live match commentary:

Oh deary deary me! Cameroon lose to Gabon and they cannot believe it! The subs and staff race on to the pitch to mob skipper Daniel Cousin, who is almost in tears.