AFCON 2025: Highlights & Memorable Moments as Big Teams Prevail

The big boys deliver Past AFCON editions — even the one before the latest — have thrown up surprises and upsets, but this one never really threatened to do so. From the group stage right down to the end, the tournament delivered just as pundits and forecasters had predicted. No underdogs or middleweights made it too far for the comfort of the big teams, and by the time the quarter-final lineup was set, the field was ripe for a ‘men only’ party, climaxing with a battle between inarguably the most formidable teams. The most perfect final? For quite some time now, Morocco and Senegal have been the best teams in Africa. Even after Ivory Coast won the previous AFCON, knocking Senegal out on penalties in the same Round of 16 that saw Morocco eliminated by South Africa, that fact stayed true. Morocco and Senegal were, lest we forget, the only African teams to make it out of the group stage of the most recent FIFA World Cup, Qatar 2022, with the former going all the way to the semi-final of that competition and record an African first in doing so, while Senegal have not lost a competitive game since the Round of 16 of the same event. Going into this AFCON, Morocco were the highest-ranked African national team (according to FIFA), trailed closely by Senegal; hence, the emergence of the two sides as finalists at the tournament really surprised no one. The game itself in Rabat on Sunday was intense and feisty, as expected, the kind of engagement you'd expect from the cream of African football. Mane the difference maker If Sadio Mane had not quite secured the Player of the Tournament award before the final — indeed, other standout performers, like Nigeria's Ademola Lookman and Brahim Diaz of Morocco also had a decent claim to the prize — it was his remarkable display of composure and maturity near the end of regulation time, as almost everyone else on his team lost their heads, that conclusively clinched it for him. Not long after referee Jean-Jacques Ndala ruled out a potential Ismaila Sarr winner for a preceding foul, the Congolese awarded a penalty for a clumsy, though seemingly soft, El Hadji Malick Diouf foul on Brahim Diaz. The response from the Senegal bench, helmed by head coach Pape Thiaw, was memorable. Thiaw called his players off the pitch in protest, effectively ordering a forfeiture of the game. One man, though, refused to heed that call: Mane. The Al-Nassr player resisted a directive that could have had dire consequences for, not just Senegal, but African football in its entirety. Mane stood his ground, eventually managing to convince his coach and teammates to return, rallying them for a resumption that would begin with Diaz missing a long-delayed spot-kick and end with a Senegal triumph. Pape Gueye may have scored the solitary goal — which sprung from a move Mane started by winning the ball in how own half and setting up Idrissa Gana Gueye for the pre-assist with a deft back-heeled pass — but nobody was left in doubt about just who it was that made all the difference in the fixture, turning what could have been one of the darkest nights in Senegalese football history into one of its most glorious. It probably was not the sort of script Mane had in mind for his last AFCON game, but he would not be complaining at all now, would he? Senegal's golden transition Transitions are supposed to be gradual at best, characterized by the patience required to transfer the institutional knowledge of one generation to the next, but Senegal has no time for that at this AFCON. The cohort on the wrong side of 30 — the likes of Mane, Edouard Mendy, Kalidou Koulibaly, and Idrissa Gueye — had already won the country's first AFCON title five years ago, but now they needed the help of those now coming through to deliver the second crown. The seamlessness of it all was best exemplified in how brilliantly 20-year-old Mamadou Sarr stepped up to replace sidelined veteran centre-back Koulibaly in the final. Senegal have glided into a gilded present from a golden recent past, and the future dawns with the same radiance. Morocco up the hosting game Prior to this tournament, Morocco had not hosted the AFCON in 37 years and had not won it in five decades. And while they narrowly failed to end the latter run, they ticked the former off the list in style. In terms of hosting facilities, this was surely the best AFCON in recent years, raising the bar for future tournaments and underlining Morocco's credentials as co-hosts for the next World Cup. Was it perfect? No, hardly any tournament ever is, but the standards were so high at this AFCON that, surely, any shortcomings can be adequately made up for between now and 2030 when the Mundial comes around.