Thursday 25 December 2025 – 05:48 PM

















Saw the first round of the tournament Africa Cup of Nations 2025 A series of remarkable phenomena and events, which reflected the usual dramatic character of the African Championship, and made the start full of unexpected records and paradoxes, both inside and outside the green rectangle.

The first round of the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations…exceptional phenomena ignite the start of Alkann

In the following lines, Cairo 24 monitors the most prominent phenomena of the first round of the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations, which Morocco will host from December 21 to January 18, 2026.

The beginning was from the match between Egypt and Zimbabwe, as the director of the match showed pictures of the Zimbabwean players during the playing of the Egyptian national anthem, in an exciting shot that sparked everyone’s ridicule and criticism of the director.

<strong>The director of the Egypt-Zimbabwe match shows pictures of Zimbabwean players while playing the Egyptian national anthem</strong>” width=”573″ height=”294″/><figcaption><strong>The director of the Egypt-Zimbabwe match shows pictures of Zimbabwean players during the playing of Egypt’s national anthem</strong></figcaption></figure> <p>The 40-year-old veteran Zimbabwean goalkeeper, Aribi Washington, caught the eye, as he reappeared against the Egyptian national team, after he had also been present against the two teams in 2013, embodying the continuation of an entire generation in African stadiums.</p> <p>The tour also witnessed a distinctive story of Zimbabwean player Jonah Fabisch, the son of a German coach, born in Kenya, and holding dual German and Zimbabwean citizenship, before he chose to represent the Zimbabwean national team. However, what is striking is that the player is the son of German coach Renard Fabisch, who led Zimbabwe in the match against Egypt in the 1994 World Cup qualifiers, where he was hit by a “brick.” The match would be replayed in France, and the Egyptian team would then lose qualification for the World Cup, in a first of its kind.</p> <p>One of the rare strange moments that caught the attention was an Egyptian fan celebrating a Zimbabwean team’s goal against his country’s team, where he received harsh criticism for this behavior.</p> <figure class=<strong>An Egyptian fan celebrates Zimbabwe’s goal against his country</strong>” width=”1200″ height=”678″/><figcaption><strong>An Egyptian fan celebrates the Zimbabwean team’s goal against his country</strong></figcaption></figure> <p>In another context, the match between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Benin witnessed a malfunction in the VAR technology, which led to a valid penalty kick not being awarded. The referee went to review the shot but was surprised that the screen was not working. He decided to continue playing despite the fact that there was a penalty kick for the Beninese national team and it was not awarded in the end, in an incident that sparked widespread arbitration controversy early in the tournament.</p> <figure class=Image
VAR technology malfunctioned in the match between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Benin

In 2019, the life of Dennis Omidi, the Ugandan national team player who scored his country’s goal against Tunisia, was less than normal. He was a nursing diploma student who spent the day studying, and the night wearing a uniform and standing guard in a prison. Football at that time was just a hobby, but at the same time he dreamed of being a professional player. He played for the Ugandan club Kitara and then moved to the APR club in Burundi. It was a normal move, but a small success for him. After 6 years, the player appears at the age of He is 31 and plays with Uganda in the African Nations, among the continent’s largest teams, and against Tunisia in the first match of the tournament. Despite the 3-1 loss, the moment he scored a goal will remain a new success, at least for the player who celebrated a crazy celebration that surprised some.

<strong>Denis Omidi</strong>” width=”750″ height=”375″/><figcaption><strong>Dennis Omidi</strong></figcaption></figure> <p>The first round also witnessed two exciting comebacks, the first for the Egyptian national team, which came back from a 1-0 defeat against Zimbabwe to win 2-1, and the second for the Burkina Faso national team, which overturned its deficit against Equatorial Guinea with two fatal goals in the 95th and 98th minutes.</p> <p>In addition to the remontada, the second group, which includes “Egypt, South Africa, Angola, and Zimbabwe,” saw all the first round matches in that group end with a score of 2-1, as the South African team defeated Angola 2-1 in the final moments of the match, which is what happened in the match between Egypt and Zimbabwe, where the Pharaohs won with a fatal goal, making the score 2-1.</p> <p>Botswana national team goalkeeper Gwazione Foko also caught the spotlight, after receiving a rating of 10 from the global SovaScore application, despite conceding three goals against Senegal, thanks to his stopping 14 shots, including ten attempts from inside the penalty area, achieving the highest number of saves in the history of the tournament.</p> <figure class=<strong>Gwazione Foko, Botswana national team goalkeeper</strong>” width=”457″ height=”312″/><figcaption><strong>Gwazione Foko, Botswana national team goalkeeper</strong></figcaption></figure> <p>Also among the records in the first round, the Egyptian national team set a new record, after taking 35 shots against Zimbabwe, which is the highest number in an African Cup of Nations match since 2010, according to the Opta global classification.</p> <p>The tournament witnessed, for the first time in its history, two penalty kicks being missed in the first two matches, the first for Morocco against the Comoros, and the second for the Mali national team against Zambia.</p> <p>Riyad Mahrez also wrote his name in the records, by scoring the fastest goal in the 2025 African Nations, after only 81 seconds against Sudan.</p> <figure class=<strong>Riyad Mahrez</strong>” width=”616″ height=”420″/><figcaption><strong>Riyad Mahrez</strong></figcaption></figure> <p>Continuing with the Algerian national team, Luca Zidane caught the attention by appearing as a goalkeeper for the Algerian national team for the first time in an official tournament, amid a remarkable presence of his family, led by his father, the legendary Zinedine Zidane, in the stands to support him, in a shot that carried a poignant human dimension.</p> <figure class=<strong>Zinedine Zidane while supporting his son Luca, the Algerian goalkeeper, in the Sudan match</strong>” width=”1200″ height=”612″/><figcaption><strong>Zinedine Zidane while supporting his son Luca, the Algerian goalkeeper, in the Sudan match</strong></figcaption></figure> <p>Anger was present on some stars, as Victor Osimhen, the Nigerian national team star, became angry after he was substituted and refused to listen to Eric Schell, the Nigerian national team coach, after he tried to talk to him and contain the situation.</p> <figure class=<strong>Victor Osimhen was angry after being substituted in the match between Nigeria and Tanzania</strong>” width=”960″ height=”654″/><figcaption><strong>Victor Osimhen was angry after being substituted in the match between Nigeria and Tanzania</strong></figcaption></figure> <p>Algerian striker Baghdad Bounedjah also went angrily to the locker room after the victory over Sudan and did not celebrate with the fans. The reason was that Adel Boulbena did not pass the ball to him in the last seconds of the match.</p> <figure class=<strong>Baghdad Bounedjah’s anger after the match between Algeria and Sudan</strong>” width=”504″ height=”737″/><figcaption><strong>Baghdad Bounedjah was angry after the match between Algeria and Sudan</strong></figcaption></figure> <p>There was a kind gesture by Mohamed Shehata, the Egyptian national team player, during the Zimbabwe match, where he took off his jacket and gave it to a Moroccan child, on the sidelines of the national team’s match against Zimbabwe, due to the extreme cold weather in Morocco. The player’s behavior received wide praise from social media pioneers, who praised his humanity, especially in light of the cold atmosphere inside the stadium, stressing that what he did came spontaneously and without waiting for the cameras to turn around. This scene comes a few days after a similar shot witnessed in the Tunisia national team’s match against Uganda, where the Carthage Eagles players were keen to protect the children accompanying them from the rain before the start of the match, an act that received great respect from the fans, and reinforced the idea that football has morals before results.</p> <figure class=Muhammad Shehata
Muhammad Shehata

Finally, the round witnessed victories for North African teams: Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria, while two Arab teams, Comoros and Sudan, lost.

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