{"id":219294,"date":"2026-01-05T11:06:16","date_gmt":"2026-01-05T09:06:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/southern-africa\/mozambique\/africa-a-team-a-dream-a-nation-rewarded-mozambique-step-into-history\/"},"modified":"2026-01-05T11:06:16","modified_gmt":"2026-01-05T09:06:16","slug":"africa-a-team-a-dream-a-nation-rewarded-mozambique-step-into-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/southern-africa\/mozambique\/africa-a-team-a-dream-a-nation-rewarded-mozambique-step-into-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Africa: A Team, a Dream, a Nation Rewarded &#8211; Mozambique Step Into History"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"29\">Until Sunday, December 28, 2025, Mozambique had never tasted victory at the TotalEnergies Africa Cup of Nations. Sixteen matches, spread across decades, had passed without a single celebratory dance.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"31\">That long wait finally came to an end at the Grand Stade d&#8217;Agadir, where the Mambas stunned Gabon 3-2 to write one of the most emotional chapters in their football history.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"33\">The result was historic on two fronts: it marked Mozambique&#8217;s first-ever AFCON victory and sealed their maiden qualification to&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/allafrica.com\/stories\/202601050054.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read more on AllAfrica.com<\/a><br \/>\n<br \/>South Africa Today Africa \u2013 Southern Africa <a title=\"Mozambique\" href=\"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/category\/southern-africa\/mozambique\/\">Mozambique<\/a> News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Until Sunday, December 28, 2025, Mozambique had never tasted victory at the TotalEnergies Africa Cup of Nations. Sixteen matches, spread across decades, had passed without a single celebratory dance. That long wait finally came to an end at the Grand Stade d&#8217;Agadir, where the Mambas stunned Gabon 3-2 to write one of the most emotional [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":219295,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.allafrica.com\/static\/images\/structure\/aa-logo-rgba-no-text-square.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[654],"tags":[258,256,7421,7099,4704,682,10970,257,23514,254,5165,7142],"class_list":["post-219294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mozambique","tag-africa","tag-africa-news","tag-dream","tag-history","tag-mozambique","tag-mozambique-news","tag-nation","tag-news","tag-rewarded","tag-south-africa-today","tag-step","tag-team"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.allafrica.com\/static\/images\/structure\/aa-logo-rgba-no-text-square.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219294\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}