Pape Cherif Ndiaye of Senegal celebrates goal during 2025 Africa Cup of Nations match between Benin and Senegal on the 30 December 2025 at Grand Stadium Tangier in Tangier ©Sydney Mahlangu/BackpagePix
Friday Jan 02, 2026. 15:41
Senegal will be looking to keep their unbeaten record at the 2025 Africa of Nations intact when they face Sudan in the round of 16 at the at the Tangier Grand Stadium on Saturday.
Kick-off is at 6pm CAT (SA, GMT+2)
The Lions of Teranga advanced to the knockout stages as Group D winners and they are the joint-second-highest goalscorers in the tournament (7) after Nigeria (8).
Pape Thiaw’s side kicked off their title challenge with a 3-0 victory over Botswana before playing out to a 1-1 draw against DR Congo and they maintained their unbeaten start by beating Benin 3-0 to pip the Leopards to top spot on goal difference.
However, the 2021 AFCON champions were at their best in the clash with DR Congo and had to come from behind to claim a share of the spoils after Sadio Mane (69′) cancelled out Cedric Bakambu’s 61st-minute opener.
“The players deserve all the praise for their performance in this difficult match that we played with ten men for some parts of the game,” Thiaw said.
“We faced a very determined Benin team but we managed to achieve our main objective of finishing top of the group.
“Our next objective is to correct the mistakes we made in our group stage match before we go into the Round of 16 because on that stage there will be no rooms for errors which will be published. We will use the next few days to address these problems.”
Sudan secured their passage to the next round as one of the best-ranked third-placed teams after only picking up three points from their opening three matches.
The Falcons of Jediane suffered a 3-0 defeat to Algeria first up in Group E and got their tournament up and running with 1-0 win against Equatorial Guinea, but then lost 2-0 against Burkina Faso.
Kwesi Appiah’s side will know what to expect from the West Africans, having faced them twice in 2026 World Cup qualifying, with Senegal running out 2-0 victors on 5 September 2025 after playing out to a 0-0 draw earlier that year on March 22.