Elias Achouri says Tunisia is growing in confidence

After losing the opening game one-nil to a lowly ranked Namibian side, Africa’s third-best team according to the latest FIFA rankings and 28th globally, played a hard-fought one-all draw against Mali.

Danish-based and FC Copenhagen forward, Achouri says the focus has now been on improving offensively.

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"Of course, I think everybody knows Tunisia, we are a team who fights on the pitch. Now we need to improve a little bit more, the offensive mindset but today I think it was a little bit better and we keep working [hard]," Achouri said.

Achouri (24), who was born in France, to a Tunisian father and an Algerian mother is playing in his first AFCON, featured in both opening games against Namibia (90 minutes) and Mali (70 minutes).

He says the point gained was vital for them.

"I think it was a game between two good teams, we knew before the game that we will play against good players and a good team because we've played a lot of games against Mali, we didn't win but we [played a draw] and got very good points," he added.

Meanwhile, Mali captain and real Sociedad right-back Hamari Traore has hailed the 34th edition of the AFCON as one of the most exciting editions to have been held if not the best.

There has not been a single goalless draw in all the 28 games played so far and the football has been enterprising.

"Yes, the level of this AFCON is too much. Every game is hard, every game is difficult but we have to put our level up. Every game is a different situation. Today [Saturday] I think we played better than against South Africa but at least we won against South Africa but today [Saturday] we didn't. We have to continue to play our football, continue to play how we know and we gonna go higher," Traore said.