We look ahead to an exciting month of international football with our AFCON 2023 preview, split group-by-group and written by the experts.
The 2023 African Cup of Nations is finally here. With the tournament originally scheduled to be played during the Northern Hemisphere’s summer, it was postponed by CAF due to weather concerns in host nation Ivory Coast and rescheduled to January-February 2024.
Twenty-four teams will compete in the group stage, with 16 of those progressing to the knockout stage of the tournament.
We have previews on all 24 of those teams, split up group-by-group and written by respected African football experts Gary Al-Smith and Owuraku Ampofo. You can read those by clicking on the links below:
Group A Preview
Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Guinea-Bissau, Equatorial Guinea
Group B Preview
Egypt, Ghana, Cape Verde, Mozambique
Group C Preview
Senegal, Cameroon, Guinea, Gambia
Group D Preview
Algeria, Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Angola
Group E Preview
Tunisia, Mali, South Africa, Namibia
Group F Preview
Morocco, DR Congo, Zambia, Tanzania
As well as our AFCON 2023 preview content, don’t forget to check out our 2023 AFCON players to watch as well as our pre-tournament AFCON 2023 predictions. We’ve looked over each side’s predicted chance of progressing through each stage of the competition according to the Opta supercomputer. The model shows each team’s likely finishing position in the group stage, as well as their odds of reaching each round in the knockout stages at the Africa Cup of Nations in Côte d’Ivoire this year.
Can reigning champions Senegal become the first national team to retain the AFCON title since Egypt in 2010? Sadio Mané was integral to their success at the 2021 edition, but former teammate Mohamed Salah will be hoping to win the tournament for the first time after losing in the final in 2021 and 2017 following his great start to the 2023-24 Premier League season at Liverpool.
Morocco became the first African team to make it past the FIFA World Cup quarter-finals just over a year ago, before eventually losing to France at the semi-final stage of Qatar 2022. They’ll be looking to follow up that success with their first AFCON title since 1976.
Nigeria had the best record in AFCON qualifying, with world class Napoli striker Victor Osimhen finishing with twice as many goals as any other player (10). Can he fire the Nigerian Super Eagles to success for the first time since 2013?
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