Morocco vs South Africa Prediction: En-Nesyri to fire Atlas Lions into quarters

We're half way through the round of 16 at the Africa Cup of Nations and Tuesday night (20:00) will see our last game before the quarter-finals in San Pedro, as Morocco and South Africa face off. As always, we've previewed the match and given you our betting predictions. 

Morocco remain unbeaten at AFCON 2023 and are one of the betting favourites to lift the trophy, yet they haven't looked particularly impressive so far and have just done enough. That is eerily familiar to their progression to the World Cup semi-finals in Qatar and it would take a brave man to back against them doing similar here.

A 3-0 win over Tanzania was followed by a 1-1 draw with DR Congo and a narrow 1-0 win over Zambia took the Atlas Lions through in top place in Group F. Now they have to face a South Africa side that battered Namibia but struggled against Tunisia and Mali.

Bafana Bafana have failed to reach the last two Cup of Nations tournaments and they will be hopeful of getting past a strong Moroccan line up here and going all the way.

Team news

Both sides are virtually at full strength for this round of 16 match, with only Noussar Mazraoui a doubt for Morocco.

Match odds

Morocco are a big 8/15 favourite to progress through to the last eight, with South Africa as large as 11/2 to win in San Pedro. The draw is a 12/5 shot.

Again, this is expected to be a tight affair with under 2.5 goals priced at just 8/15.

Morocco to win and under 2.5 goals - 15/8

Walid Regragui's men are a full 53 places above South Africa in the FIFA world rankings and that class should show through here.

Morocco haven't really looked troubled and are running high on confidence after their exploits in the middle east.

Bafana Bafana will give it their best shot and the likes of Percy Tau will be popping off shots at will.

However, I'm taking the Atlas Lions to win this one in a tight match, with a scarcity of goal mouth action.

Youssef En-Nesyri to score - 7/4

En-Nesyri was one of the stars of the World Cup for Morocco, following on from a fantastic 2022/23 season, where he scored 18 goals for Sevilla.

He has struggled for injury this season but has already bagged once at AFCON 2023 and is a good bet to do so again here.

You can find all our latest Football Betting Tips over on our dedicated Insights football page.