The Complete Draft Fantasy Guide to AFCON: What to Know & Who to Add

We want to give everyone a complete picture and guide to navigating the upcoming Africa Cup of Nations tournament. We'll discuss who will be gone, when, and which players will rise in value as a result.

Senegal will likely bring Iliman Ndiaye (above), Ismaila Sarr (above), El Hadji Malick Diouf, Idrissa Gana Gueye, Habib Diarra, and Pape Matar Sarr for AFCON leading to knock-on effects for many fantasy assets.

AFCON Fantasy Impacts

First let's address the logistics, timelines, and basic questions around AFCON. If you already know all about the what, who, and when skip to the bottom section!

What, when, and who..

What is it? The Africa Cup of Nations, which is Africa's main international men's football tournament held every 2 years When does it start and when will Premier league players leave for it?

It will begin on December 21st and FIFA have said that December 15th is the last day players must be released from their clubs to their international sides by. That should mean nearly all Premier League players should be able to play in GW16, which largely takes place on Dec. 13th and 14th. However, Man United play Bournemouth on Monday, Dec. 15th and it is still unclear at this time whether there players will be allowed to play that day. Ruben Amorin said on Dec. 9th, "The club is talking with national teams, let’s wait for the middle of the week. I don’t know for sure but we are doing our job and the national teams are talking with us, that is a good sign." Bryan Mbeumo, Amad Diallo, and Noussair Mazraoui will or will not play in GW16 depending on the result of those discussions.

When does it end and when will Premier League players return from it?

It will end on January 18th but players will return based on when their teams get knocked out of the tournament. The AFCON group stage will end on December 31st, meaning all players involved will at least miss GWs 17, 18, & 19. If their team's are knocked out then (8 of 24 teams will be), they'll be back for GW20 at the earliest. If they get to the next round (the last 16), they'll also miss GW20 and likely GW21, thus returning GW22 at the earliest. If they get knocked out in the next round (quarters, last 8) they'll be back in GW22 too. But if they get to the semis, and thus play in the finals or 3rd placed game, they'll also miss GW22 and be back in GW23 at the latest. That means, at maximum, AFCON players could miss 6 gameweeks (17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22). And at minimum 3 (17,18,19).

Who will go? National teams can wait until December 11th to submit their final squads for the tourney, so it's not completely known at the moment which Prem players will go. However, some teams have already announced and we can generally have a pretty good guess on the rest. Here's a look at all the player's definitely (or likely) going, sorted by minutes played in the Prem so far, and including their team's probabilities (by the odds) to reach the top 16 (advance from the group and miss beyond GWs 17, 18, & 19) and to reach the semis (and thus missing 20,21, & 22 too). The full list is below:

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