Mauritania vs Mali Prediction: This will be a close contest

At the Miloud Hadefi Stadium on Tuesday, Mauritania and Mali will play a decisive match to wrap off their respective CHAN group-stage campaigns. The teams are currently tied with the same number of points in Group D, but only one of them is guaranteed to advance to the knockout phase of the African Nations Championship in 2023.

Mauritania's first match of the tournament, which was played against the Black Antelopes of Angola and finished in a goalless draw on Friday, forced them to settle for a share of the spoils. Amir Abdou's team only had a little more than a third of the possession of the ball, but they battled hard to salvage a point despite having their backs against the wall for the majority of the match. As a direct consequence of this, the Lions of Chinguetti have not been defeated in any of their previous 13 matches across all competitions, either before or after the New Year. The next challenge will be to compete against an opponent that has not suffered a loss in any of the most recent six matches between the two teams, which began in September 2017 and continue to the present. Mauritania, on the other hand, is currently riding a streak of eight consecutive scoreless matches as they prepare to take the field on Tuesday. This should give them confidence that they can emerge victorious this time around.

In the opening match of the 2023 African Nations Championship on Monday evening, Mali and Angola battled to a tremendously entertaining 3-3 draw. The match was a curtain-raiser. Yoro Diaby and Ousmane Coulibaly scored in the final 18 minutes of the game to bring the score back to even after Dilson scored twice and Gilberto scored once to put the team coached by Nouhoum Diane in a 3-1 deficit coming into those final minutes. Les Eagles are currently in second place in Group D, one point behind current leaders Angola, as they prepare for a crucial matchup in Oran. Mali's run in the 2020 CHAN tournament took them all the way to the championship game. Now, three years later, they want to make sure they don't get eliminated too soon from this year's competition.

Both teams are in good shape going into this match, so we expect it to be a close match that ends with each team getting a point.