The Africa Cup of Nations kicks off this weekend with the host nation Ivory Coast opening the doors of the Olympic Stadium of Ebimpé for a meeting with Guinea-Bissau in Group A. Here, we take a look at one of the best AFCON betting markets – the HT/FT market.
Best AFCON betting markets – our HT/FT picks
Win/Win: Ivory Coast vs Guinea-Bissau (8/11)
Ivory Coast sit as the fourth favourites in the outright markets to win the Africa Cup of Nations in front of their own fans. They do, however, have one of the easiest first matchday fixtures to look forward to against Guinea-Bissau.
The host nation head into this game having smashed Sierra Leone 5-1 in a warm up match and having also defeated Gambia 2-0 away from home and Seychelles 9-0 in World Cup qualifying fixtures. In fact, you have to go back to last summer to witness Ivory Coast's last defeat when they were beaten by Zambia, putting them as one of the most in-form teams on the continent.
Guinea-Bissau also lost to Mali 6-2 in their warm up fixture, and they have beaten only Djibouti and Sierra Leone by narrow 1-0 scorelines in the past five games.
Ivory Coast will therefore be eager to get off the a magical start in front of their own, and at odds of 1/5 just to win the game, a lead at half time and full time looks on the cards.
Win/Win: Egypt vs Mozambique (1/1)
Egypt brutally lost the last AFCON final on penalties to Senegal, but Mohamed Salah and co. still sit ahead of the likes of Ivory Coast in the outright odds list.
Salah is in stunning form once again this season and sits as the joint top scorer in the Premier League before he departed for the AFCON with 14 netted for Liverpool. Salah also comes into these finals with 55 goals scored from 96 caps and is ahead of everyone, including Victor Osimhen and Sadio Mane, as the man to claim the top scorer award.
In the midst of his incredible form and the lack of ability flowing throughout the Mozambique squad, Egypt will look to right the wrongs of the 2021 final and get off to a flying start on Sunday.
Draw/Win: Cameroon vs Guinea (5/2)
Our final set of picks from the best AFCON betting markets for the opening weekend sees Cameroon look to start with a win after finishing third when they hosted the tournament in 2021. This game already feels like an early must-win for Cameroon, as they share a group with the reigning champions, Senegal.
The defending AFCON champions will be up next after this outing for Cameroon, so they will be eager to win here and rack up a few goals to put them in first early on.
Cameroon will also be taking popular goalscorer market pick Vincent Aboubakar with them once more, who had an excellent AFCON last time out by scoring eight goals to finish as the competition's top scorer. He also netted 50% of Cameroon’s four at the World Cup later that year, including a winner against Brazil.
Guinea also come into this game off the back of a shock defeat to Botswana and only narrowly beating Uganda by a mere goal in their World Cup qualifying matches.
In fact, Guinea have kept only two clean sheets in their past 10 fixtures, doing so in a 2-0 win over Ethiopia back in March of last year and against Nigeria in their warm up game this time last week.
