Afcon 2025: Contrasting exits for Mena sides as Sudan show fight while Tunisia suffer soft knockout

There are many ways to leave a major tournament and whether the exit is dignified or downbeat, there will always be regrets.

By the end of the first day of the knockouts at the Africa Cup of Nations, the footballers of Sudan and Tunisia both harboured thoughts of opportunities missed, advantages let slip – but of the two Mena countries eliminated earliest from the Afcon, little doubt about which one carried home the most pride.

Or, better put, which country packed up its bags and, man for man, headed off to what only counts temporarily as ‘home’.

Sudan’s footballers and the team’s staff, like many hundreds of thousands of compatriots, live a displaced life and have done since civil conflict enveloped their country two and half years ago.

These elite athletes may be among the more privileged of the war’s nomads, yet they are not sealed off from the violence. Several have lost family members and loved-ones; all have become acutely aware of the small influence they can have, in a time of division, as givers of joy and distraction, and of how their progress to the last-16 of Africa’s principal showpiece brought cheer to so many Sudanese.

They were beaten 3-1 by Senegal on Saturday in a rainy Tangiers, bringing to an end an odyssey that began in one of several borrowed venues, Juba, South Sudan, 16 months ago.

There, Sudan’s itinerants, most of them attached to clubs in a league that has ceased functioning because of the war, won their opening Afcon qualifier.

Once they had taken four points off Ghana, four times African champions, in their next three qualifying matches, they were set, their ticket to Morocco for these finals stamped with the mighty Ghanaians stranded below them and without a place at the 35th Afcon.

Some context here: Even in peacetime, Sudan struggled to reach modern Afcons. This was just their second appearance in seven editions. Yet, in the midst of a horrific war, with the squad dependent on training sites being loaned to them in Saudi Arabia, on ‘home’ grounds scrounged in Juba or Benghazi, they bucked that trend and made it further at a Cup of Nations than they had done in 14 years.

Compare all that with Tunisia, a football country with a high-performing league, players in leading European clubs and a national team that is the epitome of consistency in meeting its minimum targe