When war broke out in Sudan in April 2023, Ammar Taifour was in a training camp with his club Al Merrikh in Khartoum.<\/p>\n
“I just remember the surprise, the shock of the first gunshots. It was very surprising,” the 28-year-old midfielder with the Sudan team at the Africa Cup of Nations tells AFP.<\/p>\n
“Then in the days after that there were power cuts and constant gunshots. It was just unbelievable.<\/p>\n
“I just pray for peace and for everyone who’s in this situation to be safe and make it out.”<\/p>\n
Taifour, who was born in the United States, is among the lucky ones. He says he is “grateful and blessed” that family members in Sudan were able to leave the country.<\/p>\n
Goalkeeper Mohamed Al Nour, meanwhile, had to deal with the anguish of his brother being taken prisoner by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.<\/p>\n
“Luckily I have not lost any members of my family but my brother was taken prisoner for nine months by the RSF before being released,” says Al Nour.<\/p>\n
“We have experienced terror, people being killed. We just hope things improve.”<\/p>\n
The war that erupted close to three years ago between the country’s army and its former allies the RSF has had a devastating impact on the population.<\/p>\n
Tens of thousands of people have been killed and 11 million driven from their homes in what the UN has declared “the world’s worst humanitarian disaster”.<\/p>\n
Despite that backdrop, Sudan’s national football team qualified for the ongoing AFCON in Morocco and on Sunday they beat Equatorial Guinea 1-0 in Casablanca.<\/p>\n
It was just their second win at the Cup of Nations in 18 matches across six tournament appearances since they lifted the trophy in 1970.<\/p>\n
They play Burkina Faso in their final group game on Wednesday and do so with the pressure off because they are already assured of progressing to the last 16.<\/p>\n
That is a remarkable achievement regardless of the current off-field context, given Sudan have only once made the knockout stages at an AFCON since 1970 — they reached the quarter-finals in 2012.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When war broke out in Sudan in April 2023, Ammar Taifour was in a training camp with his club Al Merrikh in Khartoum. “I just remember the surprise, the shock of the first gunshots. It was very surprising,” the 28-year-old midfielder with the Sudan team at the Africa Cup of Nations tells AFP. “Then in …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59401,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59404"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59405,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59404\/revisions\/59405"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}