Bucket list away days: Experiencing AFCON for cheaper than a trip in the UK
If you’re a football fan, then you’ll know just how good an away day is.
Jumping on the train with your mates, drinking tinnies, then rocking up in some faraway town or city, hitting the boozer, and then watching your team play, before heading back home with more cans and a pit stop at the pub at the other end, these are essential parts of the friendship bonding experience for large chunks of British society, particularly young men.
However, with the cost of living skyrocketing, it’s getting harder than ever to do it.
Train prices alone have gotten silly, and that’s before you include food or drink. While football will always be the country’s national (and working-class) sport, we’ve seen a rise in people choosing to watch their teams’ games on illegal streams rather than making the trek.
Hull City fan Scott Wood was shocked by the costs of his last planned away day, so when the FA Cup rolled around this January, he decided to go for the cheaper option of flying to Africa to watch one of Hull’s players play in the African Cup of Nations.
For many hardcore football fans, the African Cup of Nations is something of a bucket list. Experiencing a World Cup and seeing your country at the Euros are obviously special, but the AFCON has a different lure. A tournament we’ve grown used to seeing on our screens, with its bright colours, incredible fans, and teams that are often a mix of superstars, journeymen who’ve played across the EFL and up-and-comers.
This year’s edition offered a more realistic option for fans, with games being hosted in Morocco, which means far shorter, and crucially, far cheaper flights from Europe. The previous two tournaments were hosted in Cameroon and the Ivory Coast, with the 2027 version split across Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, all far more difficult flights, both in terms of the routes themselves as well as prices.
For Scott, this opportunity to ‘get the shorts out in January’ was one that he couldn’t miss. “I’ve always loved the idea of going to the AFCON, and knowing it was only going to cost me what I would spend on a Championship away day, it was a no-brainer for me. The tickets were easily accessible, and I could go to a later round where the game would be a good standard,” he said.
Interestingly, across the many reasons that Scott had for going, there was a common thread that things were different from what football fans experience at home. African football offers an antidote to “the English game [which] has slowly got worse since the arrival of Pep [Guardiola], and his boring possession-based football”. Then there’s the atmosphere, which is hugely different to the sanitised atmosphere in the UK, in which “we let the game dictate the atmosphere” rather than the “carnival atmosphere” of AFCON.
Scott was lucky enough to watch Nigeria’s thrilling 2-0 win over Algeria at the Stade de Marrakech, where the football itself was quick, thrilling and far from what we’re used to on British shores. The atmosphere was electric, the Nigerian fans were outnumbered by the neighbouring Algerians, but you couldn’t avoid the noise from the pocket of Nigerian support full of singing, trumpets, drums: it was an endless loop of support that kept Victor Osimhen and his teammates going.
It wasn’t the British style crowd, so no swearing, no identikit chants that are sung by every club, and an atmosphere that got behind the team, rather than getting on their backs. Scott echoed this, saying, “They just seemed to sing and dance all game regardless of what was happening on the pitch. There seemed to be no kind of toxicity towards the opponents either”.
As for Marrakech, Scott said, “The Moroccan people were great, couldn’t have been more welcoming”. The city was alive with the noise and excitement of the tournament, with AFCON logos everywhere, from the back of cabs to posters in coffee shops. You couldn’t walk through the medina without seeing knock-off shirts for all the big teams, and there were other tourists from across Europe, who were also there for the games and a different footballing experience.
As for Scott doing another AFCON in future, he is “absolutely” ready, and he recommended the experience to everyone. There’s occasionally a sneering attitude to the African Cup of Nations in Western countries, but this is must-see stuff for real football fans. The supporters create a unique atmosphere, the football is exciting, and the tournament itself offers an engaging contrast to the greed that we’ve seen from FIFA at this year’s World Cup.
