Who will win AFCON 2022? Favorite bets, group winners and future odds

The 2022 Africa Cup of Nations will kick off on January 9, some six months later than initially planned, but the tournament is finally here.

The players have departed from their club teams to travel to Africa for the competition and will begin training with their respective national teams prior to the start of the tournament. After a couple of games on opening day, the group stage will see three or four games played per day.

The top two teams from each of the six groups will advance to the knockout phase, along with the top four third-ranked teams based on points. The knockout stage begins on January 23 and is a quick switch to each subsequent round, with the quarterfinals on January 29, the semi-finals on February 2, and the championship and third-place games on February 6.

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AFCON 2022 Odds: Who Will Win It All?

The tournament field is wide open. Of the 24 teams that qualified for the tournament, seven finished qualifying without losing. And the ranking was tight, with 10 of the 11 ranking groups decided by a mere one or two point margin. Teams fought for AFCON spots until the last day.

Algeria is the defending champion, led by Manchester City’s Riyad Mahrez, who could not be played at times in the 2019 edition. However, they will face stiff competition from Egypt as well as Senegal , both led by Liverpool stars (Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mane).

The Ivory Coast squad has several recognizable names, and Morocco It is captained by the stalwart of the Wolves Romain Saiss. Nigeria He broke through qualifying but will not feature his biggest star in Cameroon: Napoli forward Victor Osimhen, who tested positive for COVID-19 and is still recovering from a serious facial injury.

Here are the top 10 teams projected to win it all with odds courtesy of DraftKings and BetMGM:

The BetMGM futures market also presents probabilities for teams to reach the final. They are essentially the odds of winning the trophy halved:

AFCON 2022 Group Winners

Group winner odds are available through DraftKings and BetMGM, and the latter bookmaker’s odds are shown below. (Odds are only related to winning the group, not advancing the group.)

As well as being the small favorite to win it all, Senegal is a big favorite to top Group B (-550). Algeria, Egypt and Morocco are more likely to win their respective group given the quality of the opposition they will face.

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AFCON Top Scorer 2022

There are many household names among the star-studded squads in Africa this January.

Nobody in the tournament has more international goals than Liverpool Mohamed salah . Algeria’s attack is loaded, with Man City’s Riyad mahrez joined by Baghdad Bounedjah , who scored four goals in qualifying and owns an incredible goal record for Qatari club Al-Sadd, scoring 128 goals in 108 games.

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Ivory Coast also has several key players in front of the net, such as Ajax in form Sebastien haller joins the Elephants attack by a pair of Premier League wingers in Nicolas Pepe Y Wilfried zaha . Haller has 12 goals in 17 Eredivisie games this season, but most impressive is that he scored 10 times in six Champions League group stage games as Ajax achieved a perfect group stage record.

Here are the 15 players with the lowest odds of winning the top scorer award at AFCON 2022, courtesy of BetMGM: