On December 21, Rabat’s Stade Moulay Abdellah, now being rebuilt with grand ambitions for the many prestige events that will occupy it over the next five years, will fill to its 70,000 capacity for a resonant opening match of the 2025 African Cup of Nations. The hosts and heavyweights Morocco have the privilege of kicking off their big show and will share it with the least populated nation of the entire Arab League, the Comoros Islands.
Comoros are also the smallest country, with their 850,000 citizens, among the 24 who have qualified for the 35th Afcon, the highlight in international football across the Mena region in the next 12 months and a tournament that, as the organisers outlined in their slick staging of the draw for the groups in Rabat on Monday evening, will be boldly advertising the growing presence of Morocco on the global sporting stage. Arenas like the Stade Moulay Abdellah are being prepared to also host matches at the 2030 World Cup, to be staged across Morocco, Spain and Portugal.
The Afcon, restored to Moroccan soil for the first time since 1988, need not feel like a dress rehearsal for that World Cup. It is a huge, compelling show in itself. But the fact that facilities are being readied for Fifa’s marquee event five years hence should ensure a de luxe edition of Afcon. The pitches ought to be excellent, which has not always been the case at some previous editions of the tournament; the winter timing, running from the penultimate week of December into mid-January should provide ideal conditions in North Africa, cool enough that players’ stamina is not sapped, although as ever, the Afcon finds itself squeezed into a clogged wider football calendar. There will be the usual trail of complaints from club managers, especially in Europe, about their stars being taken away for a portion of the 2025/26 domestic season.
And those elite stars will be many. By December, Egyptians will be wiser about how closely and how effectively the peak years of Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah and new Manchester City signing Omar Marmoush are coinciding. “As a coach, I’m fortunate to have Salah, one of the greatest,” said Hossam Hassan, the head coach of Egypt, in Rabat to see his team drawn in a first phase pool with South Africa, who finished third at the last Afcon, Angola and Zimbabwe, “and I’m very glad to have both Salah and Marmoush.”
If Salah were to follow the legendary example of Hassan, who played internationally until he was 40, he could conceivably be at four more Cup of Nations tournaments. But at 32, he is increasingly aware that time is running out for him to win one. With Salah leading the Pharaohs attack, Egypt have twice been beaten finalists, were surprisingly knocked out at the last-16 stage by South Africa when they hosted the 2019 event, and lost Salah to injury after less than two games of their disappointing 2023 Afcon in Ivory Coast.
Hassan, who won three Afcons with Egypt as a sharp centre-forward, is pleased to be taking on his first as a head coach “in an Arab African country,” noting that the long history of the Cup of Nations tends to produce more North African champions when it is staged in a Mediterranean nation. Algeria won it in Egypt six years ago, Egypt and Tunisia won as hosts in 2006 and 2004 respectively.
As for Morocco, you have to reach back into distant history to find their last Afcon triumph. Monday’s draw ceremony briefly gave the stage to 71-year Ahmed ‘Baba’ Makrouh, whose goal, way back in 1976 in Addis Ababa, secured what is still Morocco’s only Nations Cup gold medal. It is an eerie lack of impact on the continent’s most illustrious honours board, even more so while Morocco now hold the unique status, since their glorious run to the semi-finals in Qatar 2022, of being the only African or Arab country to have reached the last four of a World Cup.
“I’d be lying if I said there isn’t pressure,” admitted Walid Regragui, the head coach who oversaw the Atlas Lions’ Qatar success and remains in charge of a squad that has, on paper at least, grown in attacking strength since then. Morocco flopped at Afcon 2023, but with the likes of Real Madrid’s Brahim Diaz and Monaco’s Eliesse Ben Seghir coming into the squad since, and Al Ain’s Soufiane Rahimi establishing himself as a consistent match-winner for club and country, they should start their own tournament in 11 months time as favourites. And they will be motivated. “We’ve been waiting a long time to get hold of this trophy,” said Regragui.
If he felt a degree of relief that the Comoros islanders, outsiders and apparent minnows, are to be Morocco’s first obstacle, it was tinged with wariness. Regragui last year watched how pressure can overcome a host nation. Ivory Coast, who ended up winning their own Afcon, went through some terrible contortions on the way to their final. They lost a group game 4-0 in front of their own fans to unfancied Equatorial Guinea.
Such ambushes can afflict the strongest hosts, as Salah’s Egypt found in 2019. What’s more, Comoros, with their smattering of talented players employed at clubs in France and in the Saudi Pro League, more than punched their weight in their one previous appearance at a Cup of Nations. In 2021 in Cameroon, they beat four-time African champions Ghana to reach the knockout phase.
Mali and Zambia make up the rest of Morocco’s Group A. “Morocco against Mali almost feels like a derby,” noted Mustapha Hadji, the former Morocco midfielder and 1998 African Footballer of the Year, “although all the teams in the group present a challenge. But it’s a great opportunity for us to keep the trophy here at last. You see all the effort that’s being made by everyone involved in Morocco and coach Regragui is doing a great job.”
Tunisia have been drawn in a group with Nigeria, but should find Uganda and Tanzania negotiable opponents and would be expected to progress. Perhaps the most intriguing fixture of the matchday one is Algeria’s opener in Group E against Sudan, whose reaching these finals has been an exemplary study in determination, resourcefulness and defiance. Because of the conflict in Sudan, the team have played none of their qualifying matches at home, borrowing venues around Africa and training camps in the Gulf. Their main clubs have meanwhile relocated to faraway Mauritania.
Yet still they made it Morocco 2025, and Sudan’s reward an immediate chance to test how real is Algeria’s apparent recovery in the year since Riyad Mahrez’s Desert Foxes were embarrassed with a group stage exit from the last Afcon – a tournament with a habit of tripping up the so-called heavyweights.
