Ivory Coast national football team players: Renard’s first squad, and the nine who have never won a cap

Herve Renard picked twenty-five players for Ivory Coast’s first matches since the World Cup, and nine of them have yet to play for the country. Here is the full squad, with every player’s caps, goals and club.

Hervé Renard named his first Ivory Coast squad on Wednesday 16 September, and nine of the twenty-five players in it have never played a senior international for the country. Eight of those nine had never even been called up before. That is a lot of new faces to hand a qualifying campaign that starts eight days later.

Who are the Ivory Coast national football team players right now?

The squad below is the one Renard picked for two 2027 Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers, against Ghana on 24 September in Bouaké and Somalia on 29 September in Abidjan, plus a friendly with Cameroon in Ebimpé on 3 October. It is not the group that played at the World Cup. Seventeen of Renard’s twenty-five were in that squad, eight are new to it, and nine of the twenty-six who went to North America are gone.

Caps and goals are correct to 30 June 2026, the night Norway beat Ivory Coast 1-2 in Arlington to knock them out of the World Cup in the round of 32. The Elephants have not played a match since, so nothing in these columns has moved.

Goalkeepers

Player	Club	Caps
Yahia Fofana	Çaykur Rizespor	39
Alban Lafont	Amedspor	4
Mohamed Koné	Charleroi	0

Defenders

Player	Club	Caps	Goals
Ghislain Konan	Wolverhampton Wanderers	57	0
Odilon Kossounou	Atalanta	40	0
Evan Ndicka	Roma	28	0
Guéla Doué	Bayer Leverkusen	24	3
Emmanuel Agbadou	Beşiktaş	24	2
Ousmane Diomandé	Nottingham Forest	16	1
Kassoum Ouattara	Beşiktaş	0	0
Christ Tapé	Toulouse	0	0

Midfielders

Player	Club	Caps	Goals
Franck Kessié (captain)	Atalanta	106	16
Ibrahim Sangaré	Nottingham Forest	61	12
Christ Inao Oulaï	Fiorentina	13	0
Amadou Koné	Neom	0	0
Malick Yalcouyé	Brighton and Hove Albion	0	0
Eddy Doué	Estrela da Amadora	0	0
Patrick Zabi	Paris FC	0	0

Forwards

Player	Club	Caps	Goals
Nicolas Pépé	Villarreal	60	14
Yan Diomandé	Real Madrid	14	3
Bazoumana Touré	Newcastle United	9	2
Ange-Yoan Bonny	Inter Milan	5	0
Elye Wahi	Nice (on loan)	5	0
Yann Gboho	Coventry City	0	0
Rayan Fofana	Le Havre (on loan)	0	0

The captain has more caps than the entire forward line

Add the caps column and you get 505 across the twenty-five. Kessié has 106 of them. The seven forwards have 93 between them, which means Ivory Coast’s captain has played more internationals on his own than every attacker Renard picked put together. Pépé, at 31, accounts for 60 of that 93.

The goals column tells the same story in a smaller space. The squad has 53 international goals in it. Kessié has 16 and Pépé has 14, so two players aged 29 and 31 have scored more than the other twenty-three combined. Six players share the remaining 23, and seventeen of the squad have never scored for Ivory Coast at all.

Four names carry most of the experience: Kessié on 106, Sangaré on 61, Pépé on 60 and Konan on 57. Those four hold 284 caps, which is more than half of everything the squad has. Kessié is fourth on Ivory Coast’s all-time appearance list, behind Didier Zokora on 123, Kolo Touré on 120 and Max Gradel on 110. He is the only man in this squad inside the all-time top ten, and the next-best, Sangaré on 61, is 29 caps short of tenth place.

Nine players who have never won a cap

Eight of the twenty-five are first-time call-ups: Christ Tapé at Toulouse, Kassoum Ouattara at Beşiktaş, Amadou Koné at Neom, Patrick Zabi at Paris FC, Eddy Doué at Estrela da Amadora, Malick Yalcouyé at Brighton, Rayan Fofana at Le Havre and Yann Gboho at Coventry. Seven of the eight are 21 or younger. Zabi is 19.

Yalcouyé is the one with a footnote attached. He was in Ivory Coast’s preliminary World Cup squad in May, did not make the final twenty-six, and has spent the opening weeks of the Premier League season scoring for Brighton. Gboho is the outlier at 25, and he left Toulouse for Coventry on 4 September.

The ninth uncapped player is not new at all. Mohamed Koné was in Ivory Coast’s World Cup twenty-six, did not get on, and is still on zero.

Why Hervé Renard is back

Emerse Faé left on 31 July when his contract ran out. He had won the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations, taking over mid-tournament on home soil and lifting it in February 2024, and he took Ivory Coast to the round of 32 in North America, which is the furthest the country has ever gone at a World Cup in four attempts. The federation did not renew him anyway.

Renard replaced him in August. He had the job before, between 2014 and 2015, and he won the Africa Cup of Nations with it in February 2015, when Ivory Coast beat Ghana 9-8 on penalties in Bata after a goalless final that needed 22 kicks to settle. He had already won the same trophy with Zambia in 2012. He spent this summer’s World Cup on the Tunisia bench, taking that job on an interim basis after Sabri Lamouchi was sacked.

His first match back, 24 September, is against Ghana. Somebody at CAF has a sense of humour.

Who is missing from the squad

Three players are out injured: Amad Diallo, who scored Ivory Coast’s goal against Norway, Wilfried Singo and Martial Godo. Six more were left out, and the list is not a small one. Sébastien Haller, Simon Adingra, Evann Guessand, Oumar Diakité, Christopher Opéri and Parfait Guiagon were all in the World Cup squad or its preliminary list.

Two others have taken themselves out of the argument. Jean-Michaël Seri announced his international retirement in July after eleven years and five Africa Cup of Nations campaigns. Seko Fofana followed on 14 September, two days before Renard named this squad, closing a career of 34 caps and seven goals that began against Morocco in November 2017.

That is the context for eight new faces. The midfield Renard inherited had Seri and Seko Fofana in it in June, and by September it did not.

Where they play now

Yan Diomandé is 19, has 14 caps, and plays for Real Madrid. He joined from RB Leipzig in August for a reported 125 million euros, rising to 140 million with add-ons — a club-record fee for Real Madrid — on a contract running to June 2033, after a single Bundesliga season in which he scored 12 goals, set up several more and was voted the league’s young player of the season.

He is not the only one who moved. Guéla Doué went from Strasbourg to Bayer Leverkusen on 1 September for a reported 30 million euros, rising to 37.5 million with bonuses, on a five-year deal; he is the older brother of Paris Saint-Germain’s Désiré Doué, and he played all four of Ivory Coast’s World Cup matches. Kessié came back to Serie A on 29 August, joining Atalanta as a free agent after leaving Al-Ahli. Bazoumana Touré signed for Newcastle in July. Wahi is at Nice on loan from Eintracht Frankfurt, and Rayan Fofana is at Le Havre on loan from Lens.

The twenty-five are spread across nine countries, and England holds the biggest block of them with six: Konan at Wolves, Ousmane Diomandé and Sangaré at Nottingham Forest, Touré at Newcastle, Yalcouyé at Brighton and Gboho at Coventry. Italy has five, France four, Turkey four.

What Ivory Coast are actually playing for

Group C of 2027 Africa Cup of Nations qualifying contains Ivory Coast, Ghana, Gambia and Somalia. Twenty-four teams reach the finals, which Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania are co-hosting and have already qualified for as hosts. Qualifying runs over six matchdays across three windows, the first between 21 September and 6 October, the second in November, the last in late March 2027.

Ivory Coast have won the Africa Cup of Nations three times, in 1992, 2015 and 2023. They are not the holders. Egypt beat them 3-2 in the quarter-finals of the 2025 edition in Agadir, a game in which Marmoush, Rabia and Salah scored and Guéla Doué got one back with seventeen minutes left.

Renard has two competitive matches and a friendly to work out what he has. Nine of his players have never had one.

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