Next Saturday signifies starts the 30th edition of the biennial football tournament the African Cup Of Nations, and whilst us fans will no doubt enjoy some of the most entertaining games you could wish to see, the headache starts for managers of the top club teams around the world as they lose their players to the tournament in the middle of the league season for at least 3 weeks. That’s providing they all come back fit and well from it.
The event was supposed to have been played in Morocco, however after their withdrawl at the 11th hour the tournament has been switched to and now includes Equatorial Guinea (who were originally disqualified from the tournament for fielding an ineligible player in qualification).
Quite surprisingly the 2013 winners Nigeria have not even qualified this time around.
The bookies favourites to win it are the Ivory Coast, although Algeria fresh from their heroics at last years World Cup are expected to push them all the way. And if you fancy a long shot Guinea and Congo are the outside bets.
All of the games can been seen live on ITV4 and British Eurosport 2.