The 2023 Africa Cup of Nations has been among the most interesting and entertaining of recent iterations of the tournament.
Held in Ivory Coast in January and February 2024, the finals produced plenty of early shocks and notable results for the host nation.
Ivory Coast lost two of their three matches in the group stage, the last of which was a 4-0 defeat to Equatorial Guinea. They immediately fired head coach Jean-Louis Gasset, even though they entered the knockout stages as one of the best teams in third place. Assistant Emers Fae took over as interim manager and incredibly managed to lead his team through the knockouts to the finals.
Waiting for Ivory Coast were Nigeria, who beat the Elephants 1-0 in the group stage. The Super Eagles have been one of the few relatively consistent teams in the tournament, although they needed a penalty shoot-out to get past 10-man South Africa in the semi-finals after previous strong performances, including a 2-0 win over Cameroon in one of the qualifiers. -tournament favorites.
Who won the Africa Cup of Nations 2023?
Ivory Coast won the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations, becoming the first host nation to become champions since Egypt in 2006.
The Elephants beat Nigeria 2-1 in the final on February 10, 2024. William Troost-Ekong gave the Super Eagles a first-half lead but Franck Kessie deservedly equalized just after the hour mark. With just nine minutes of normal time remaining, Sebastien Haller, who took time off from football in 2022 following a cancer diagnosis, scored the winning goal.
It was Ivory Coast’s third AFCON title and their first since 2015. Only Ghana, Cameroon and Egypt have won the tournament more often.
