Karl Etta Eyong’s early strike gave five-time champions Cameroon victory over Gabon in their 2025 Africa Cup of Nations Group F opener in Agadir.<\/p>\n
In an intense meeting between Central African neighbours, Cameroon set a bristling pace from the start by snapping up transitions and advancing at speed in the hope of catching Gabon cold.<\/p>\n
The ploy paid off when Bryan Mbeumo collected Samuel Kotto’s ball over the top and threaded a deft pass on to the run of Eyong inside the box, allowing the Levante forward to slide a first-time finish through goalkeeper Loyce Mbaba’s legs – with the goal confirmed as onside by a Video Assistant Referee (VAR) check.<\/p>\n
Sensing the need for a considerable momentum change, Gabon coach Thierry Mouyouma produced a surprise by shuffling his attack in the 33rd minute, replacing Teddy Averlant and Eric Bocoum with Mario Lemina and the leading marksman in the nation’s history, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang – who had been expected to miss the game through injury.<\/p>\n
Royce Openda had Gabon’s best chance 18 minutes from time, drawing an excellent save from the advanced Devis Epassy after Andre Poko’s raking pass provided him with a shooting opportunity from a tight angle inside the box.<\/p>\n
Substitute Frank Magri almost doubled Cameroon’s lead shortly afterwards, heading Manchester United forward Mbeumo’s corner against the crossbar via a deflection off defender Jacques Ekomie.<\/p>\n
Both sides play the second of their three group stage games<\/a> on Sunday, when Gabon are in Agadir against Mozambique, who lost 1-0 to holders Ivory Coast<\/a> earlier on Wednesday, and Cameroon face the Elephants in Marrakech (20:00).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Karl Etta Eyong’s early strike gave five-time champions Cameroon victory over Gabon in their 2025 Africa Cup of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":370006,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-370005","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=370005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370005\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/370006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}