Africa’s superpowers assemble for Cup of Nations knockout stages
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Jonathan Wilson at the Stade Al Medina Mon, 5 January 2026 at 8:00 am UTC·5 min read For a decade or more, a familiar theme of Cups of Nations has been how the pyramid of African football has been growing little taller but much broader. African sides came no closer to really challenging at a World Cup, but the range of teams capable of beating the continent’s elite, of getting to the knockout stage of the Cup of Nations, was becoming more diverse. Perhaps, though, a new phase is beginning. It’s dangerous always to read too much into the performance of one side at one tournament, but in Qatar in 2022 Morocco at last broke through the quarter-final barrier and became the first African side to...