At the final whistle, John Boye, Samuel Inkoom and Prince Tagoe stood, shirtless and disconsolate on the edge of the pitch, seemingly unable to believe their defeat. With a scream Davies Nkausu hurtled past, carrying a Zambian flag in his outstretched arm. Christopher Katongo wasn't far behind and, as the rest of the squad joined them, they danced delighted in the centre circle.

And so, after their 1-0 win, Zambia head on to Libreville, a city that, for them, stands as plangent as any in the annals of tragedy. It was two minutes after take-off from Libreville that the plane carrying the Zambia team to Senegal for a World Cup qualifier in 1993 exploded, killing all on board. The greatest of all Zambian players, Kalusha Bwalya, survived only because he played for PSV Eindhoven and so was making his own way to the game. He is now the president of the Football Association of Zambia.

"It means a lot," he said on Wednesday night. "We are pleased. Everybody's so happy to be where we are. We thank God every day for the path we have taken, for the direction that we have, but it's the boys who have done it. I think when we go to Libreville that we will get emotional. I think there will be a reconnect before the game with the new team and the old team and hopefully we can end it well on Sunday."

Emotion has been a key part of Zambia's progress. "We could only get to Libreville by reaching the final, so we did it," said their coach, Hervé Renard, a man who just over seven years ago was being sacked by Cambridge United. Now, wearing the white shirt in which he is yet to lose a competitive game in two tournaments (a fateful switch to blue cost Zambia their game against Cameroon two years ago, and he seemingly counts the penalty shootout defeat to Nigeria in the quarter-final as a draw).

"There's something written that we have to go to play to honour the memories of the Zambia national team that died in 1993," Renard went on. "It was catastrophic for the nation. The 12 million people of Zambia are waiting for us to go back to Libreville. Immediately after we arrive, we will go to the place. We just have to think of them and play for them and play for Zambia because it's a fantastic country."

But really, this was another tactical triumph for Renard. He brought in Nkausu for Chisamba Lungu, allowing Francis Kasonde to move from right-back into midfield, so the central pair sat very deep. That meant that even when Asamoah Gyan won knockdowns – which, given how hampered he clearly was by his calf injury, probably wasn't as often as he would have liked – Zambia always had four men around ready to pick up the loose ball. Yes, Zambia had some fortune, not least when Gyan had his eighth-minute penalty saved by Kennedy Mweene, but by and large they restricted Ghana, letting them have the ball and trusting that they wouldn't do anything too dangerous with it.

Lungu came on midway through the second half. By then Ghana were frustrated, with John Mensah and Gyan both struggling. Soon both had gone off. Zambia suddenly had an extra attacking thrust. Rainford Kalaba charged, laid in a pass to Emmanuel Mayuka on the edge of the box and continued his run. John Boye was momentarily distracted, which gave Mayuka just enough space to turn and hook a shot with just enough curve in off the post.

Before the Cup of Nations began, the Ivory Coast coach, François Zahoui, admitted, "We don't respect opponents so we go to each Cup of Nations as favourites and come back disappointed." His response has been to opt for an approach of conservative pragmatism that has carried them to the final on the back of a defence that is yet to concede a goal. Wednesday night's 1-0 win over Mali meant their five games in the tournament have brought nine goals for and none conceded.

Ghana, perhaps, have taken on the Ivorian mantle of underachievement. For the third Cup of Nations in a row they reached the semi-final, and for the third Cup of Nations in a row they go home with nothing. There were happy predictions that having finished third and then second, Ghana would complete their ascent by winning in Libreville on Sunday, but football doesn't dole out trophies just because it's somebody's turn. You wonder, though, whether a sense of entitlement had filtered through to the players, whether confidence became overconfidence.

Perhaps it's unfair to say the players were complacent, but there was certainly a complacency about certain Ghanaian journalists. "When you lose tomorrow," one said to the Zambia coach in the pre-match press conference, "will that still be the highlight of your career?" And then there is the odd antipathy based around the Ghanaian insistence that Renard was only ever a fitness coach and not Claude Le Roy's assistant in his time as coach of Ghana. Technically, in terms of job title, that's true, but Renard saw his role as more than that. When asked who it would benefit that Renard had coached so many of the Ghana side, Sulley Muntari's response was comically blunt. "He was never my coach," he said. "He looked after my fitness."

Whatever the reason, Ghana looked like potential champions only against Mali. They scraped by Botswana, laboured to a draw against Guinea and got through an ugly quarter-final against Tunisia thanks to an awful goalkeeping mistake and a breakdown of Tunisian discipline. Injuries to key players hampered them, as did the fact they had a day less to prepare than Zambia and had to travel from Franceville while their opponents were in situ, but their bench was found wanting, and the fear now must be that they become locked in the cycle of entitlement and failure familiar to so many other sides with supposed golden generations.

Zambia, meanwhile, have no such anxieties as they continue to ride their wave of emotion. "This is the moment," said their captain, Christopher Katongo. "This is the final. The tears will be dropping from the fans when they watch the final. When we step on the field, we have to do everything we can to get this cup."