Ivory Coast

The Story

Ivory Coast arrives in 2026 carrying a story that would be rejected in a movie pitch for being too sentimental. Two years ago, at the AFCON they were hosting, they were publicly humiliated — beaten 4-0 by Equatorial Guinea in the group stage, their coach fired within 48 hours, their tournament effectively over. They only advanced because of a last-minute result in another group. Then they won the whole thing.

The manager who took over mid-tournament, Emerse Faé, had never been a head coach before. He's still the coach. He took the Elephants through qualifying and has them in Group J alongside Tunisia, Paraguay, and Honduras — a draw that on paper is their best chance of a round-of-16 run since the 2006 golden generation of Drogba, Touré, and Eboué.

The player who scored the AFCON-winning goal — Sébastien Haller, 18 months out from cancer — may or may not be on the plane in June. He's been fighting for fitness all season on loan at Utrecht. Nicolas Pépé has been recalled after two years away. Kessié captains. Amad Diallo, Simon Adingra, Yves Bissouma, Wilfried Singo, and the PSG-linked Evan Ndicka fill out a squad that is younger, faster, and probably more dangerous than Faé's AFCON winners. They are not favorites in the group. They are not nobody, either.

3 Players to Know

Sébastien Haller

In July 2022, at 28, he signed with Borussia Dortmund as their replacement for Erling Haaland. A week later, on the team's preseason tour, he was diagnosed with testicular cancer. Two surgeries, four rounds of chemotherapy, eight months out of football. On World Cancer Day 2023 he scored his first Dortmund goal. A year after that, he scored the winner in the AFCON final at home in Abidjan — 2-1 against Nigeria, 10 minutes from time, a country collapsing around him. There is no better story in the tournament. He's currently on loan at FC Utrecht, fighting to be fit for June.

Nicolas Pépé

Arsenal paid £72 million for him in 2019, which was then their club-record fee and is still widely considered one of the most misfiring signings of the Premier League era. He's 30 now, at Villarreal, and after two years of international exile has been called back into the Ivory Coast squad ahead of the World Cup. The winger Emerse Faé wants — direct, left-footed, capable of producing a moment out of nothing — is the same player Arsenal thought they were buying. He's just had to leave England to remember it.

Franck Kessié

The midfield engine who went from Atalanta to Milan to Barcelona to Al-Ahli in Saudi Arabia — a very modern career arc for a player who, on his day, is still one of the best box-to-box midfielders Africa has produced in a decade. Won the AFCON captain's armband on home soil in 2024 and wore it with the kind of authority that makes you remember why Milan won a Scudetto with him in it. If Haller is the emotional center of this team, Kessié is the reason it functions.

The Food

Signature Dish

Attiéké is the answer to a question most Americans haven't thought to ask — fermented, granulated cassava, steamed into couscous-sized pearls, served with grilled fish (usually tilapia or dorade) marinated in onion and chile. The side you want is alloco: fried plantains that have passed from sweet into almost savory. A good Ivorian plate is loud with Scotch bonnet, bright with lime, and finished with a tomato-pepper sauce called kedjenou that somebody's aunt has been simmering since morning.

Where to Eat in DFW

Lola's Restaurant and Lounge (3435 N Beltline Rd, Irving) is the closest thing DFW has to an Ivorian kitchen — officially Nigerian-leaning Afropolitan, but the menu runs jollof, suya, goat pepper soup, and fried plantains with grilled fish that will read immediately to any West African. The room is warm, the Afrobeats-to-coupé-décalé ratio is correct, and the owners will absolutely put the match on if you ask. Call ahead on match days; Irving's Little Lagos corridor fills up.

Fan Culture

Ivorian support is coupé-décalé — which is to say, it's a dance floor that happens to also be watching a soccer match. Orange shirts, green-and-white scarves, a horn section that borrows from Abidjan nightclubs and refuses to stop. The 2024 AFCON in Abidjan turned every overpass into a speaker stack and every traffic circle into a party. You will hear Magic System. You will hear the late DJ Arafat. You will hear a full stadium sing "Premier Gaou" at 120 decibels and forget that a ball is even involved. The smell in the air is grilled fish and palm wine and petrol and joy.