{"id":96114,"date":"2025-12-23T16:21:17","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T16:21:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/all-news\/ivory-coast-faces-mozambique-in-afcon-2025-opener"},"modified":"2025-12-23T16:59:55","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T16:59:55","slug":"ivory-coast-faces-mozambique-in-afcon-2025-opener","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/all-news\/ivory-coast-faces-mozambique-in-afcon-2025-opener","title":{"rendered":"Ivory Coast Faces Mozambique in AFCON 2025 Opener"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"ap-article-header-tag\"> <strong>Africa-Press &#8211; Mozambique. <\/strong> <\/span><b>Ivory Coast, the reigning<\/b> <b>Africa Cup of Nations<\/b> <b>champion, is launching its campaign to defend its title with a first game against Mozambique on Wednesday.<\/b><\/p>\n<p>The two teams are kicking off the action in group F, ahead of a face-off between Cameroon and Gabon later in the evening.<\/p>\n<p>Ivory Coast is looking to claim a fourth AFCON crown. In 2023, the Elephants won the title on home soil after a 2-1 victory against Nigeria in the final.<\/p>\n<p>The team&#8217;s coach Emerse Fae\u0301 expressed his confidence before the tournament.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, Mozambique has never progressed beyond the group stages in five participations to the competition, but the outsider team does not lack ambition.<\/p>\n<p>Wednesday&#8217;s match between Ivory Coast and Mozambique kicks off in Marrakech at 6.30 pm local time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ap-article-footer-note\">Find more news and analyses on <span class=\"ap-highlight-country\">Mozambique<\/span> on the <span class=\"ap-highlight-brand\">Africa Press<\/span> website<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Africa-Press &#8211; Mozambique. Ivory Coast, the reigning Africa Cup of Nations champion, is launching its campaign to defend its title with a first game against Mozambique on Wednesday. The two teams are kicking off the action in group F, ahead of a face-off between Cameroon and Gabon later in the evening. Ivory Coast is looking [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":96113,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,17],"tags":[555,125,102,283,994],"class_list":["post-96114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-sport","tag-afcon","tag-football","tag-ivory-coast","tag-mozambique","tag-tournament"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.1 (Yoast SEO v27.0) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Ivory Coast Faces Mozambique in AFCON 2025 Opener - Mozambique<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"-article-header-tag&quot;&gt; Africa-Press - Mozambique. Ivory Coast, the reigning ...\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/all-news\/ivory-coast-faces-mozambique-in-afcon-2025-opener\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ivory Coast Faces Mozambique in AFCON 2025 Opener\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"-article-header-tag&quot;&gt; Africa-Press - Mozambique. 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