{"id":333105,"date":"2025-12-24T10:14:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-24T10:14:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/333105\/"},"modified":"2025-12-24T10:14:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-24T10:14:09","slug":"afcon-2025-yoane-wissa-and-bryan-mbeumo-inspiring-dango-ouattara-at-brentford-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/333105\/","title":{"rendered":"Afcon 2025: Yoane Wissa and Bryan Mbeumo ‘inspiring’ Dango Ouattara at Brentford"},"content":{"rendered":"

Only Manchester City<\/a>‘s Erling Haaland has eclipsed Brentford<\/a>‘s Brazilian striker Igor Thiago’s 11 goals<\/a> in this season’s Premier League, while Ouattara has also played an important role by scoring three times and winning four penalties \u2013 the most of any player in the division.<\/p>\n

Burkina Faso international Ouattara is now poised to feature at a third successive Afcon, where he will hope for a greater impact after an injury restricted him to one start during his country’s run to the last 16 in 2023.<\/p>\n

While at French club Lorient, Ouattara was part of the Stallions side which beat Gabon on penalties<\/a> to reach the quarter-finals in 2021 and scored the only goal in their surprise win over Tunisia<\/a> in the last eight, although his late dismissal in that game ruled him out of their semi-final defeat to eventual champions Senegal.<\/p>\n

“There are people who have been here much longer and who have played at more Afcons, who are more experienced than me,” said the 23-year-old.<\/p>\n

“There are some playing their first Afcon, some their second. Everyone has a role to play.”<\/p>\n

One member of the Burkina Faso squad who has a key role is Sunderland<\/a> forward Bertrand Traore, the Stallions skipper.<\/p>\n

The 30-year-old is approaching 100 caps for his country and Ouattara says his quiet authority is important.<\/p>\n

“If he has something to tell you, he’ll tell you. If there’s something you could correct, he’ll try to get you to correct it.<\/p>\n

“He’s someone who is calm. He speaks when he has something positive to contribute. If it’s not necessary to speak, he won’t.”<\/p>\n

Ouattara could face former Bee Mbeumo as early as the last-16 stage in Morocco, with Brentford<\/a> midfielder Frank Onyeka’s Nigeria potential opponents later in the knockout stage.<\/p>\n

Burkina Faso start against Equatorial Guinea<\/a> in Casablanca on Wednesday (12:30 GMT), the same day Group E opponents Algeria and Sudan face off in Rabat (15:00 GMT).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Only Manchester City‘s Erling Haaland has eclipsed Brentford‘s Brazilian striker Igor Thiago’s 11 goals in this season’s Premier…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":333106,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-333105","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=333105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333105\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/333106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}