{"id":3904,"date":"2024-01-03T13:11:15","date_gmt":"2024-01-03T13:11:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/?p=3904"},"modified":"2024-01-20T22:15:40","modified_gmt":"2024-01-20T22:15:40","slug":"afcon-countdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/2024\/01\/03\/afcon-countdown\/","title":{"rendered":"<strong>AFCON Countdown<\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>By Satish Sekar \u00a9 Satish Sekar (January 3<sup>rd<\/sup> 2024)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>AFCON Anticipation Rising<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The 34<sup>th<\/sup> Africa Cup of Nations will begin on January 13<sup>th<\/sup> just ten days from now. It will be the second time the tournament has been hosted by the Ivory Coast (la C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire). This edition will open in Abidjan\u2019s Alassane Ouattara Stadium also known as the Olympic Stadium of Ebimp\u00e9, and (formerly known as the National Stadium of Ivory Coast) with la C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire facing Guinea-Bissau.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Six stadiums in five cities will be used to host the tournament \u2013 two of which are in Abidjan.<a href=\"#_ftn1\" id=\"_ftnref1\">[1]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Elephants have won the competition twice, 1992 and 2015, both times against Ghana\u2019s Black Stars and both times it was on penalties. The second time the Elephants became Champions of Africa history was made as a Frenchman became the first non-African to win the AFCON as a coach, and Herv\u00e9 Renard also became the first coach to win AFCONs with two separate countries \u2013 Zambia in 2012 was his first triumph.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Zambia\u2019s Chipolopolo return to the forthcoming AFCON after three successive failures to qualify. The provisional list of up to 55 players for all 24 participants has been confirmed by the Conf\u00e9d\u00e9ration Africaine de Football (CAF). This will be the first AFCON that the participants may select up to 27 players \u2013 previously the limit was 23.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cafonline.com\/media\/szzh20fx\/afcon-2023-provisional-squads-list.pdf\">https:\/\/www.cafonline.com\/media\/szzh20fx\/afcon-2023-provisional-squads-list.pdf<\/a> Each country must announce their final squads by today \u2013 the squads of each team will be published soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref1\" id=\"_ftn1\">[1]<\/a> Each stadium will be named in articles on the six groups to be published soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Satish Sekar \u00a9 Satish Sekar (January 3rd 2024) AFCON Anticipation Rising The 34th Africa Cup of Nations will begin on January 13th just ten days<span class=\"excerpt-hellip\"> [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2497,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16],"tags":[88,120,549,550,22],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3904"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3904"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3905,"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3904\/revisions\/3905"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}