Note: While this edition of the Africa Cup of Nations is officially referred as Afcon 2021 due to the tournament’s postponement, for continuity, we might sometimes refer to it as Afcon 2022.
Semi-Final: Burkina Faso vs Senegal
The delayed 2021 Africa Cup of Nations reaches the semi-final stage in Cameroon on Wednesday, with pre-tournament favourites Senegal going up against Burkina Faso.
Douala is the venue as the West African duo meet for a place in Sunday’s final, where they will meet the winners of Thursday’s heavy duty clash between hosts Cameroon and Egypt.
Sadio Mane swapped goalscoring for creativity as his much-fancied side were pushed all the way by Equatorial Guinea at the quarter-final stage.
The Liverpool star laid the opening goal on a plate for Famara Diedhiou, only for Jannick Buyla to grab a deserved equaliser for the gritty underdogs.
Cheikhou Kouyate and Ismaila Sarr did the business in the final quarter, though, keeping the Lions of Teranga on course for a maiden Afcon crown.
Aliou Cisse’s men had earlier knocked out Cape Verde in the Round of 16, after negotiating their way through Group B past the challenge of Guinea, Malawi and Zimbabwe.
Burkina Faso also had to work mightily hard for their place in the last four, shocking North African favourites Tunisia.
Teenager Dango Ouattara almost went from hero to zero when, after scoring what proved to be the only goal of the game on the brink of half time, he was sent off for a stray elbow with eight minutes of regular time left.
But the Stallions clung on to take what is becoming a customary semi-final berth in recent Afcon tournaments.
The Burkinabe didn’t have it easy in the Round of 16, either, as they nudged past scrappy Gabon 7-6 in a penalty shootout.
They earlier progressed from Group A despite losing in the opening match of the competition to hosts Cameroon, with a win and a draw from games against Ethiopia and Cape Verde enough to see them through in second spot.
Kick off at 21:00 (Central African Time).
Africa Cup of Nations predictions for 2 February
Find all the fixtures and results for the 2022 Africa Cup of Nations here.
Prediction methodology explained: The expected win percentage is based off publicly available odds. For example, if a team’s odds are 2.30, the expected chance of winning is 43%. If the odds are 1.62 the expected chance of winning is 62% and so on. These are accurate at the time of writing but are subject to change. Where there is no value listed, the odds were not available at the time of writing. Other odds added here are taken from soccerstats247’s algorithm.
| RESULT PREDICTION | Draw (win after AET) |
| OVER/UNDER PREDICTION | under 2.5 goals |
| HT / FT PREDICTION | Burkina Faso / draw |
| TEAM TO SCORE PREDICTION | both teams |
| ANYTIME GOALSCORER PREDICTION | n/a |