{"id":36887,"date":"2025-12-22T02:15:18","date_gmt":"2025-12-22T02:15:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/afcon-2025-why-is-it-taking-place-in-december-why-is-it-traditionally-in-the-winter-why-is-it-every-two-years\/"},"modified":"2025-12-22T02:15:21","modified_gmt":"2025-12-22T02:15:21","slug":"afcon-2025-why-is-it-taking-place-in-december-why-is-it-traditionally-in-the-winter-why-is-it-every-two-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/afcon-2025-why-is-it-taking-place-in-december-why-is-it-traditionally-in-the-winter-why-is-it-every-two-years\/","title":{"rendered":"Afcon 2025: Why is it taking place in December? Why is it traditionally in the winter? Why is it every two years?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><b class=\"ssrcss-1xjjfut-BoldText e5tfeyi3\">The Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) will take place between 21 December 2025 and 18 January 2026 in Morocco.<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The 2025 edition was originally due to be a mid-year tournament, to reduce scheduling conflicts with European clubs and competitions.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The summer event was supposed to boost tourism and highlight what Morocco has to offer, before the country co-hosts the 2030 World Cup with Spain and Portugal.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But it was shifted to December to make way for Fifa&#8217;s expanded Club World Cup, held in the summer.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The move to a start in December rather than January will avoid conflicts with the Champions League and Europa League, which restart on 20 and 22 January respectively.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It will be the first time Afcon has been held at this time of year, with matches played in Rabat, Casablanca, Marrakech, Agadir, Tangier and Fez.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">There will not be matches on 25 December.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Players participating in Afcon were released from clubs on 15 December.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">This means teams have only had a week to prepare before the tournament begins, sparking anger from coaches who have been left with a short window in which to prepare their teams.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Angola&#8217;s coach Patrice Beaumelle said the situation was &#8220;nonsense&#8221; and that &#8220;you can&#8217;t prepare a serious team in just two or three sessions&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The last time Afcon was held in summer was the 2019 edition, hosted by Egypt.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In recent years, the tournament has been played between January and February.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/football\/articles\/cx2e1gexypxo?at_medium=RSS&#038;at_campaign=rss\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) will take place between 21 December 2025 and 18 January 2026 in Morocco. The 2025 edition was originally due to be a mid-year tournament, to reduce scheduling conflicts with European clubs and competitions. The summer event was supposed to boost tourism and highlight what Morocco has to offer, before [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36888,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[21,18],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36887"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36887"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36887\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36889,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36887\/revisions\/36889"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}