The 2025 African Cup of Nations event in Morocco was in the stands on Wednesday December 24. All smiles, Zinédine Zidane was filmed numerous times during the meeting between Algeria and Sudan in Rabat. The Blues icon and three-time Champions League winner on the Real Madrid bench came to support his younger son Luca as a starter in goal for the Algerian team, the Fennecs.
But this spotlight did not hide other empty stands on certain matches. This is why the Moroccan organizing committee for CAN 2025 authorized, with the agreement of the Confederation of African Football (CAF), free access to supporters approximately twenty minutes after kick-off, in order to fill the sparse stadiums.
On Wednesday evening, during the second match played in the large Agadir stadium, containing 45,000 seats, between Cameroon and Gabon, the stands were almost empty as the two teams warmed up before kick-off. Despite the incessant rain in the coastal city, they filled up abundantly during the first period, reaching an attendance of 35,200 people.
Crowd movements
This had already been the case during Egypt’s victory over Zimbabwe on Monday, December 22, in the same venue, where the anthems of each country were sung in front of a thousand spectators before the stadium screens showed an official attendance of 28,199 spectators at the end of the match. This caused crowd movements in places that were difficult to control by the stewards.
Other matches like DR-Congo-Benin or Tunisia-Uganda, widely documented by spectators on social networks with the slogan “the people’s CAN”experienced such a measure. On the other hand, the meetings concerning the Morocco team, all scheduled to be sold out, are not affected.
Ticketing and stadium filling are an important issue for the Moroccan organizers of CAN 2025. Morocco has set itself a double mission: to win a title that has eluded it for fifty years and to offer perfect organization before hosting the 2030 Football World Cup, jointly with Spain and Portugal.
The competition takes place against a backdrop of tensions in African football. The president of the CAF, the South African Patrice Motsepe, threw a wrench in the pond on December 20, on the eve of the launch of the 2025 edition. He announced that the African Cup of Nations will now be played every four years, and no longer every two years, from 2028. This change in calendar aims to harmonize the world football calendar. It will be compensated by the creation of a new annual competition inspired by the UEFA Nations League, adapted to the African continent, which will begin in 2029.
