{"id":351285,"date":"2026-01-04T07:22:50","date_gmt":"2026-01-04T07:22:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/351285\/"},"modified":"2026-01-04T07:22:50","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T07:22:50","slug":"afcon-2025-mohamed-salah-scoring-and-achraf-hakimi-return-six-things-from-group-stage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/351285\/","title":{"rendered":"Afcon 2025: Mohamed Salah scoring and Achraf Hakimi return &#8211; six things from group stage"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Before every tournament, organisers always tell fans and media to expect &#8220;the best Afcon ever&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">While the jury remains out on that for now, Morocco 2025 is certainly making a strong case for being the wettest Afcon ever.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">TV cameras have regularly picked up players&#8217; shirts sticking to their skin in torrential downpours during a cold and rainy period in Morocco &#8211; in stark contrast to the tropical conditions that have often tested players <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sport\/africa\/48880306\" class=\"ssrcss-k8mrr8-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">at past tournaments<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Having enjoyed a short respite, the rain is forecast to return for all four days on which the last 16 ties will be played, testing the resolve of fans.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Stadiums have so far been far from full for matches not involving the hosts, but the quality of the facilities has been impressive, including the pitches which have soaked up the rain without a problem.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">And while you cannot exactly call this Afcon a dry run, Morocco&#8217;s huge investment in renovating and building stadiums in preparation for co-hosting the 2030 Fifa World Cup alongside Spain and Portugal has definitely paid early dividends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Before every tournament, organisers always tell fans and media to expect &#8220;the best Afcon ever&#8221;. While the jury&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":351286,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-351285","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\/351285","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=351285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351285\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/351286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}