While Manchester City have brought Patrick Vieira to the Premier League and the fixture list has been ravaged by the weather conditions, the big news on Friday was unquestionably the machine gun attack on the Togo team bus. It is the biggest year in the continent's history in football terms with the World Cup in South Africa just six months away, but the events near the Congolese border have cast a large shadow ahead of the African Nations Cup in Angola.

Amy Lawrence, writing in the Guardian, believes it will be hard for anyone involved to shake off the effects of the attack.

"For the multitude of footballers who have abandoned Europe's deep freeze to pull on their national colours in 30 degrees of sub-Saharan heat, Angola was supposed to represent the start of something special. But the shocking incident that saw the Togo team buses shot at yesterday, despite military protection, after travelling into Angola from neighbouring Congo has changed everything.

It will overshadow an Africa Cup of Nations which never before had assumed such significance. This edition, the prelude to the first World Cup to be hosted on the continent, pulls the curtain on the most important year in the history of African football.

Now that the driver of one of Togo's team buses has been killed and several other passengers, including players, have been wounded, it is impossible for the tournament to go ahead as normal. One of Togo's squad has said the team want to pull out of the event, in which they are due to play their opening game against Ghana on Monday. "It's true that no one wants to play," said Alaixys Romao. "We're not capable of it. We're thinking first of all about the health of our injured because there was a lot of blood on the ground."

Getting over the trauma will be a major challenge for all the participants. The continent's five World Cup finalists here in particular – the Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Ghana, Nigeria and Algeria – must somehow ensure they are not too badly derailed because a successful tournament was clearly part of their preparations for next summer in South Africa as well as their chance for continental triumph.

It will be of particular distress to the iconic figures of African football, who are so proud of this event. Michael Essien, Didier Drogba and Samuel Eto'o, performers of the highest calibre in world football, exemplify why the African game – on the pitch at least – has never had it so good.

The number of excellent individuals from Africa is not in doubt. The challenge now is to make the next leap. Can they create an excellent team – one capable not only of winning the Africa Cup of Nations but also eyeballing the establishment until the latter stages at the World Cup five months from now?

[But] everyone in Angola has far more pressing concerns. A tournament which was supposed to be solely about football and celebration of Africa is now the victim of an outrage and tragedy."

Patrick Barclay in the Times, meanwhile, says we must support the continent.

"How hollow they ring, all those military metaphors and hyperbolic allusions to violence in the description of football, when we hear of what happened in Angola yesterday.

The horrifying attack on the Togo bus as it carried the squad, Emmanuel Adebayor included, towards an African Cup of Nations match against Ghana on Monday that will now, surely, be abandoned, is a reminder that war and lawlessness rage across much of a continent proudly preparing to host its first World Cup.

But we must take care to react proportionately. The World Cup is to take place in South Africa, not a conflict zone separated from the rest of Angola by a strip of land belonging to the Demoratic Republic of Congo. There is no more reason to ratchet up the fear factor now than there would have been to abandon all European football after the terrible events at the Heysel Stadium in Belgium in 1985.

That Africa seems to suffer more than its fair share of the most profound misfortune — stadium crushes and the air crash that wiped out a Zambia squad in 1993 are but two examples — should merely double the game’s resolve to encourage its development as a sporting environment. The World Cup that kicks off in June in Johannesburg, when South Africa meet Mexico, is a key part of that.

Why was the risk taken of sending the tournament to Angola? This will be high in the list of questions that will be asked in the inquest. I have never been able to understand why the choice was made to go somewhere so short not only of security but of accommodation. It has never been less tempting to take the trouble to attend.

The decision was a serious and avoidable blunder because there are plenty of safer countries in Africa. In 2002, I went to Mali, which was the poorest country on the planet at the time, yet safe and friendly — there was less begging, even, than in London, and the people displayed better manners — and the tournament in Burkina Faso passed off relatively serenely as well four years earlier.

For anyone to be put off a trip to Africa, let alone South Africa for the World Cup, on the basis of yesterday’s incident would be ridiculous. The World Cup is no safer and no less safe for it. There was a risk before and there is a risk now.

It is the price of taking the world game to its most problematic continent and to reheat the old arguments would be futile."