The Africa Cup of Nations finally gets underway today after a controversial build-up to the 30th edition which included a hasty late switch of hosts to Equatorial Guinea in the wake of concerns over the Ebola virus.<\/p>\n
Equatorial Guinea had two months to prepare to host the finals, making the mostly colourful and sometimes chaotic continental soccer tournament even more unpredictable than usual this year.<\/p>\n
Along with the regular questions ahead of an Africa Cup of Nations comes one \u2014 will Cote d\u2019Ivoire\u2019s star-studded squad finally break their title drought?<\/p>\n
Equatorial Guinea took over as host at very short notice from Morocco, which didn\u2019t want to stage the championship because of fears over the Ebola outbreak in West Africa and fans travelling from that region.<\/p>\n
The replacement host is a small, curious oil-rich nation in Central Africa.<\/p>\n
Even without this year\u2019s hurried preparations, few tournaments bring soccer stars back down to earth like the Nations Cup, where every two years some of the world\u2019s best players leave their highly-paid day jobs in the luxurious English, Spanish and Italian leagues for three weeks of adventure back in Africa.<\/p>\n
And few tournaments are as difficult to predict.<\/p>\n
Burkina Faso, with no previous impressive history at the tournament, made the final and nearly won in 2013. Zambia did win in 2012, beating Yaya Toure, Didier Drogba, Gervinho and Cote d\u2019Ivoire\u2019s other big names in the final.<\/p>\n
In 2015, Algeria, the top-ranked team in Africa and their best performer at last year\u2019s World Cup, are the favourite but that isn\u2019t really helpful at the African Cup, as Cote d\u2019Ivoire and Ghana know too well.<\/p>\n
For a long time Africa\u2019s two most talented teams Cote d\u2019Ivoire and Ghana haven\u2019t won the title for a long time with the Elephants in more than 20 years and the Black Stars\u2019 misery stretching to more than 30 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can\u2019t make predictions in this kind of competition,\u201d said Algeria\u2019s French coach Christian Gourcuff. \u201cCertainly many have named us the favourites but we must invest a great deal.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is quality [in the team], but there are also conditions that we must get used to. We disregard\u00a0the judgments of others.\u201d<\/p>\n
Algeria are in the toughest group, with Ghana, Senegal and South Africa. They\u2019ll all be based in Mongomo for the group stage, where they\u2019ll likely come across each other often off the field in one of the town\u2019s two or three recognised hotels.<\/p>\n
Facing the unknown, Tunisia, probably like many teams, will be bringing its own cooks to prepare meals for the players in Ebebiyin, way up in the north-eastern corner of Equatorial Guinea.<\/p>\n
The Tunisians are also flying in all their food from home \u201cjust in case,\u201d coach Georges Leekens said.<\/p>\n
Ghana officials say they\u2019ve resolved a dispute over player payments, another issue that often plagues teams at the African Cup and which has been rumbling on for Ghana since last year\u2019s World Cup.<\/p>\n
Bonuses have been cut to $5,000 per player for each match they play in, and a possible payout of $60,000 each if they win the title. In comparison, Spain\u2019s players were each offered a $980,000 incentive to win the World Cup last year.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is not about the money,\u201d Ghana captain Asamoah Gyan said. \u201cWe are just here to die for the nation because we are Ghanaians.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not the richest tournament, but one thing the African Cup does produce is passion.<\/p>\n
For teams like Cape Verde, the tiny Atlantic Ocean island nation, and Republic of Congo, it\u2019s the only chance they get to mix with the big stars. And for some fans, it\u2019s the only chance they get to see their team have a chance at international glory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Africa Cup of Nations finally gets underway today after a controversial build-up to the 30th edition which included a hasty late switch of hosts to Equatorial Guinea in the wake of concerns over the Ebola virus. Equatorial Guinea had two months to prepare to host the finals, making the mostly colourful and sometimes chaotic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1264,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1263"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1267,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1263\/revisions\/1267"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}