{"id":81058,"date":"2026-01-01T18:33:56","date_gmt":"2026-01-01T18:33:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/?p=81058"},"modified":"2026-01-01T18:33:56","modified_gmt":"2026-01-01T18:33:56","slug":"gabon-government-suspends-national-team-bans-aubameyang","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/2026\/01\/01\/gabon-government-suspends-national-team-bans-aubameyang\/","title":{"rendered":"Gabon Government Suspends National Team, Bans Aubameyang"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Samuel Adeola<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The Gabonese government has suspended the country\u2019s national football team indefinitely following a poor showing at the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations in Morocco.<br \/>\nGabon finished bottom of Group F after losing all three matches, exiting the tournament without a point and triggering outrage at home.<br \/>\nIn a statement broadcast on state television, the government announced the dissolution of the entire coaching crew and imposed a ban on senior players Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Bruno Ecuele Manga from future national team selection.<br \/>\nSports authorities described the team\u2019s performance as unacceptable and unworthy of the nation\u2019s football standards, leading to what has been termed one of the harshest sanctions in the team\u2019s history.<br \/>\nThe decision has plunged Gabonese football into uncertainty, with no timeline given for the team\u2019s return to international competition, while the move is also expected to attract FIFA scrutiny over government interference.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Samuel Adeola &nbsp; The Gabonese government has suspended the country\u2019s national football team indefinitely following a poor showing at the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations in Morocco. Gabon finished bottom of Group F after losing all three matches, exiting the tournament without a point and triggering outrage at home. In a statement broadcast on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":81059,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81058"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81058\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81060,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81058\/revisions\/81060"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}