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LAST CHANCE: Aged 30, Ivory Coast's Kolo Toure wants success now, not later.

Picture taken from www.dailymail.co.uk

 When we arrived here, they gave us a restaurant-café to sleep in. It wasn't even a hotel 

Coach Paulo Duarte launched a scathing attack on the treatment meted out to his team since their arrival, claiming that competition organisers CAF had treated them shabbily compared to the Angolans and group favourites Ivory Coast.

"They are protected. Everyone here is not working in the same conditions," the Portuguese said.

"Some teams have journeys of 10 or 15 minutes to get to training, while we have to travel for one hour along a winding road to have a session (in Luba, 50km from their hotel in Malabo)."

"When we arrived here, they gave us a restaurant-café to sleep in. It wasn't even a hotel.

"That's what the Nations Cup is like," he said in disgust.

His criticisms - roundly rejected by CAF - will inevitably act as a spur to the Stallions who are seeking their first Nations Cup win in 14 years.

Ivory Coast are hot favourites to top the table at Monday's game that is being billed as a face-off for second place and a potential quarter-final match-up against Senegal.

Duarte described the encounter on the Equatorial Guinea capital as "decisive" for their Cup fate.

"We've inherited a difficult group with Ivory Coast and Angola," he said.

"You can say that the Ivorians will qualify so this is a very important match for second place.

"The team which wins the first match will have done 80% of the work," Duarte said and added that his problem was not the team's rivals, nor the group, but that too many of their regular players couldn't make it.

Burkina Faso have only reached the knockout stages once, when they hosted the Cup in 1998, finishing fourth.

Initially no squad turned up with broader smiles than Burkina Faso after enduring months of anxiety when Namibia claimed that Cameroon-born left-back Herve Zengue was ineligible.

Angola represent stiff opposition, particularly following the appointment of coach Lito Vidigal that was vindicated when he guided them to second place in the 2011 championship.

Ivory Coast start the January 21 to February 12 tournament as co-favourites with Ghana, and most pundits predict they will clash in a west African climax.

But despite parading so many skilful and experienced footballers, there is no guarantee the Ivorian Elephants will go all the way as they "choked" in 2008 and 2010.

Didier Drogba, the face of Ivory Coast football, does not accept that winning the championship will be easier this time round.

He cites the failure to qualify by "big guns" Egypt, Algeria, Cameroon, Nigeria and South Africa.

At 33 Drogba must realise time is not on his side and goalkeeper Boubacar Barry (32), midfielder Didier Zokora (31) and defender Kolo Toure (30) are other likely first choices desperate to grasp the Cup trophy.