AFCON 2025: Biggest and best stories from Matchday 2

Nigeria squandered a three-goal lead

Nigeria's failure to qualify for the 2026 World Cup was something of a national embarrassment, and it's treating this AFCON tournament as a reputation-saving revenge mission. And for the first 75 minutes of its big match against World Cup-bound Tunisia, that's exactly how it played. The Super Eagles went up 3-0 through goals from Victor Osimhen, Wilfred Ndidi and Ademola Lookman and looked stronger than they had in years.

Or did they? Shortly after Lookman netted Nigeria's third, the team switched off and allowed Tunisia right back into the game. Montassar Talbi scored first to bring the score to 3-1, and from there, everything fell apart. Nigeria conceded a needless penalty, Tunisia converted it, and the last few minutes of the game were an all-out scramble from both sides. If Nigeria wanted to show the world it deserved a World Cup berth, this nervy, naive performance wasn't the way to do it.

"We have to improve for the last 15 minutes, but for sure you cannot play a high pressure for ninety minutes, it is impossible," said Nigeria coach Eric Chelle after the match. "My vision is to have a team that can do that, but 75 minutes is good."

Is it, though? Other AFCON favorites like Algeria and Egypt are managing ninety minutes of pressure just fine. Nigeria might be in for a rude awakening in the knockout stages if it brings this attitude along with it.

Mali and Mozambique showed off Africa's incredible depth

One of AFCON's great joys is coming face-to-face with the African continent's remarkable soccer parity. Yes, we tend to see the same well-resourced programs in the World Cup—Morocco, Nigeria, Egypt, etc—but there are dozens of stellar national teams ranked just below them who are more than capable of delivering well-earned upsets. Mali and Mozambique did just that in Matchday 2: Mali held host Morocco to a 1-1 draw to snatch second in Group A while Mozambique snuck past a profligate Gabon team to throw Group F into disarray. Mali's draw broke Morocco's record-setting international win streak while Mozambique's win all but condemned Gabon to an early AFCON elimination.

Some familiar faces dropped by to say hello

Most of Europe's top leagues break for the holiday season; that means that busy global superstars finally have a chance to kick back and relax during the Christmas holiday. Three Spain-based French stars, though—Kylian Mbappé , Aurelien Tchouameni and Jules Koundé—traded rest for an AFCON adventure and flew all the way to Morocco to take in the tournament in person.

AFCON will return for Matchday 3 on Monday.