Africa's top two teams, Morocco and Senegal, meet on Sunday night at the Stade Prince Moulay Abdellah in Rabat in the final of the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations.
Both sides will be aiming to lift the trophy for only the second time since the inception of the tournament in 1957.
Morocco, who claimed the crown in 1976, entered the competition boasting a 19-match winning streak stretching back to March 2024.
During the sequence they qualified for this summer's World Cup in the United States, Mexico and Canada.
Though the run of victories ended on 26 December 2025 with a 1-1 draw against Mali in the group stages of the Cup of Nations, Walid Regragui's charges have powered on, eliminating Tanzania in the last-16, Cameroon in the quarter-finals and Nigeria in the last four.
"I think we deserve to be in the final," said Regragui. "We have played top teams like Mali, Cameroon and Nigeria, and we will be facing another of the best teams in the final."
Regragui, 50, played in the last Morocco side to reach the Cup of Nations final in 2004 in Tunisia.
"Eventually people are going to accept that Morocco are actually a major football nation," he added.
"But to go to the next step we have to win titles, so Sunday's match is really important in terms of our history."
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Senegal 'ready and determined'
Senegal's triumph at the Cup of Nations came more recently than Morocco's. They beat Egypt in a penalty shootout when the 2021 competition was held in Cameroon in 2022.
Former Senegal international Aliou Cissé orchestrated that success nearly three years after his side lost to Algeria in the final at the 2019 tournament – the first to feature 24 teams.
Pape Thiaw, Cissé's successor, has retained the backbone from that team in the shapes of goalkeeper Edouard Mendy, defender Kalidou Koulibaly, midfielder Idriss Gana Gueye and striker Sadio Mané.
Gueye is expected to skipper the side in the absence of the suspended Koulibaly.
Thiaw has also drafted in fresh faces such as Sunderland's Habib Diarra and Paris Saint-Germain's 17-year-old striker Ibrahim Mbaye.
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"We will be up against a very good Morocco team," said Thiaw, a former Senegal international striker.
"They've done some wonderful things during this competition as well as before and I have to congratulate them. They have raised the level and have forced us all to do the same. But we're ready and determined to take the cup back home."
Mané, who scored against Egypt in the semi-final, said after the game in Tangier that the final would be his last Cup of Nations match.
"I am a soldier of the nation," said the 33-year-old, who has previously played for Southampton and Liverpool in England and Bayern Munich in Germany.
"And I try to give my all every day, whether in training or in matches. But that's not the most important thing for me. The most important thing is to bring this cup to Dakar."
