Thoughtful Thursday: Forget South Africa, Angola wants to showcase Africa’s best talent.

While European clubs complaining about the fact that they have to give up their African internationals may dominate the headlines, the truth is that this African Cup of Nations will probably be the biggest ever.

All eyes are already on Africa because of the summer’s big event, and while the host is Angola, and not a traditional powerhouse such as Ghana or Nigeria, viewers from around the world will be hoping to see glimpses of magic from the teams that will be showing up in South Africa come June.

As for the club complaints, few realize that the African Cup of Nations will only last from the opening match between Angola and Mali on January 10th to the Cup Final on January 21st. That is 12 days. And obviously only two teams will even make it to the final. So in a short response to the Euro-centric critics: shut it and have some respect for some of the best national teams in the world.

The groups for the African Cup of nations are these:

Group A: Angola, Mali, Malawi, Algeria

Group B: Cote d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Togo

Group C: Egypt, Nigeria, Mozambique, Benin

Group D: Cameroon, Gabon, Zambia, Tunisia

You’ll find a snazzy statistic about each participating nation after the jump.

Group A:

Angola: Trained by Al-Ahly legend, Manuel Jose, Angola have not captured the stunning form from 2004-2006 under influential Luís Oliveira Gonçalves who got Angola to the 2006 World Cup ahead of Nigeria.

Mali: Frenchman Jean-François Jodar is Mali’s manager and has a background in youth development, coaching both French and United Arab Emirates youth teams and the United Arab Emirates senior side in the past. According to Wikipedia, he is 0.0 meters tall.

Malawi: The team formerly known as the Nyasaland flames have never managed to qualify for the World Cup finals and only made it once to the African Cup of Nations, in 1984.

Algeria:Lionel Messi has gone on record saying that he was impressed with their attacking approach after Algeria put in a valiant effort in a 4-3 friendly loss against the Albiceleste.

Group B:

Cote d'Ivoire: With 19 goals in the third phase of qualification, Cote d'Ivoire will expect to go very deep in this competition, relying on Didier Drogba.

Burkina Faso: They had the most prolific striker in the entire qualification process in Moumouni Dagano, who scored 12 times.

Ghana: Ghana’s biggest win was against Kenya 13:0 in 1965. Ghana’s biggest defeat was against Brazil 8:2 in 1996

Togo: The current African Player of the Year is Togo star, Emmanual Adebayor.

Group C:

Egypt: Egypt is tied for most appearances in a final match (7) with the Ghana but have two more titles than the Blackstars.

Nigeria: In 2005, Mikel Jon Obi was voted second best player in the U-20 World Cup behind some no name Argentinean that plays for Barcelona. I think his name is Leo Messi, or something like that.

Mozambique: Manager Mart Nooij previously worked with the Dutch FA as a training instructor.

Benin: The Benin national football team is known as Les Écureuils, or The Squirrels.

Group D:

Cameroon: The Indomitable Lions were referred to as the Germany of Africa by Arsene Wenger. They were a former Germany colony as well.

Gabon: Financed by oil money, Gabon has recruited French legend Alain Giresse as its manager.

Zambia: Named the “Chipolopolo”, or “Copper Bullets” in English, the entire Zambian team except Kalusha Bwalya was killed in a plane crash off the coast of Gabon in 1993, but still managed to get one goal away from qualifying for the 1994 World Cup.

Tunisia: Tunisia was the first African team to win a game at the World Cup, coming from behind to beat Mexico 3-1 in their inaugural match at the event in Argentina in 1978.

Go on and let your voice be heard, who will win the African Cup of Nations?