Who do you think will be Champions? It's hard to predict but I think it will be one of the 4 African Giants - Cameroon, Ghana, Nigeria, or Cote d'Ivoire. It could be anyone but the home side Ghana will be tough to beat. I think Cote d'Ivoire have the best chance to do so with a team packed full of talent. So my vote goes to Cote d'Ivoire.
ghana will do well hosting, but won't win, they donot have enough depth to win this tournament. I say semi finals for Ghana if they keep their current form. The winner will be either Ivory Coast or Nigeria. They may even meet in the final.
but look out for Mali they will be the nightmare for some team with the way Kanoute been playing they can do a lot
Mali have good players in Diarra, Sissoko, Kanoute and Traore but they don't have the quality to beat Cote d'Ivoire, Cameroon, Nigeria, or Ghana.
how about cameroon? they look like a team that can go all the way assuming that samuel etoo plays the tournament.
yea i think they will go far but they don't have the depth of cote d'ivoire. i still predict that eto'o wins the golden shoe either way.
I dont think in my heart that Egypt would win it again, but you really cant count them out!!! You guys dont even have them in your consideration.
Egypt will be the strongest N African contender, but you must know that N Africans tend to have terrible nations cups when they are hosted in West Africa. Yes Egypt won in 1998 in B Faso, but Nigeria wasn't even in that tournament, Cameroon was at an all time low, Senegal was yet to emerge, Ghana was going through their roughest patch in history. When u look at the semifinalists R Congo, Burkina Faso, S Africa, Egypt, you can tell that it was a very weak competition. Currently Nigeria, Ivory Coast, and Ghana have their best squads in over a decade. Cameroon is also in the same class, and lets not forget Senegal who were robbed against Egypt in the semi finals. In all honesty Egypt doesn't stand a chance. Without hosting the last tournamet, they would not have won it, and I don't mean that in a disrespectful way I'm just being honest.
Unless Nigeria manages to sort out their various issues soon, I don't see them having much of a shot at the title. Their FA has been the laughing stock of Africa lately, they still field 6+ strikers at the same time and the decision to name Berti Vogts new coach looks, uh, suboptimal to me for various reasons. At this point the host, Cameroon and Ivory Coast seem to be the top contenders. Cameroon and CIV currently are superiour in depth, but Ghana coach Le Roy seems to be working hard to resolve that issue. One more thing to consider is injuries and the like, I'm sorta curious how the current CIV team would do without Drogba at a major tournament. A couple other teams like Senegal, Mali, Guinea and Egypt have an outside shot as well, but rely too much on few star players. Egypt and the other North Africans traditionally perform poorly in Westafrica.
I think Nigeria will win the Cup against Morocco in the final. They both have very talented young players.
Morocco dosent have a chance at the finals unless ivory coast cameroon and ghana maybe even senegal all died in a plane accident which hopefully dosent happen
They have a chance!! Not with the actuall crap A-Team but with the players of the Olympicteam like El Zhar and Benjelloun.
Sorry but don't get your hopes up too high on Morocco. Cameroon, Nigeria, Cote D'Ivoire, Ghana... They will kill Morocco.
Let's be honest, Ghana should be very, very strong favorites to win this competition. They have a very good squad in their own right, plus they're playing at home. And for some reason, playing at home in Africa seems to matter even more than elsewhere in the world. Since 1996 three of the six CAN's have been won by the hosts (including the last two), and in two others outsiders like Burkina Faso and Mali were able to finish fourth as hosts. In that same period the hosts of Copa America, the European Championships, and the Asian Cup have produced just champ out of 9 tournaments (Columbia in 2001 when no one else sent their top side). Hosts have done very well in Africa at the youth level, too (far better than European ones). Look at Congo right now. I was surprised at this so I did some analysis, and it turns out the rate for home teams winning in qualifying for tournaments in Africa also easily beat those in any other continent. The reasons for these statistics can be discussed elsewhere, but my conclusion is that Ghana will have overwhelmingly the best chance to win. If someone offered me the field with them taking Ghana at even odds I would turn them down.
So far in 25 Nations Cups, the host-nation has won 11 times including the last 2 tournaments. Ghana has hosted the tournament 3 times and won 2 of those. So I have to reneg on my vote. I agree that Ghana are most likely to win.
I think Ghana has all it takes to win this tournament but CIV will surely give them a run for their money. Cameroun cannot be ruled out while Nigeria is still unpredictable. The winner is most likely to come from one of these 4 countries. Nigeria, as usual, may also get to the Semi final but it is very hard for me to say we can win this tournament. Furthermore I am very surprise at the high rating people, especially non-Nigerians like Marocfan, are giving to Nigeria on this forum. Are we still that good? Have people not being following our performance in recent time? Or is it because of the exploits of our players in European leagues? Yes, we have the players but we don't have a team. The last time the Super Eagles played well as far as I am concerned was that friendly against Ireland.The performance of eagles is just too bad, struggling to beat Niger and Lesotho. MIKEL IS THE FUTURE OF NIGERIAN FOOTBALL