The continent’s best player Yaya Toure and his new club colleague and Ivory Coast teammate Wilfried Bony will be the star attractions as the 30th Africa Cup of Nations begins in Equatorial Guinea.

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Toure, fresh from winning the African Footballer of the Year award for an unprecedented fourth successive time, this week saw Bony become a club colleague of his when the striker moved from Swansea City to Manchester City for a reported fee of £28m (Dh155m), making him one of Africa’s most expensive players ever.

The Elephants come into the 2015 Cup of Nations with reason to believe they can finally win the continental crown for the first time since 1992, despite seeing the great Didier Drogba retire last summer.

However, having been drawn in a treacherous looking Group D along with Cameroon, Mali and Guinea, Herve Renard’s side are happy not to be so widely seen as favourites to win a competition that is always hard to predict.

“It is true that there is a little less pressure on us, but everyone keeps a close eye on the Ivorian team,” Toure said. 

“We have paid in the past for having a reputation as one of the favourites. Now we need to stay calm. The Ivory Coast need a second title and to go on looking for more trophies,” added the 31-year-old midfielder, whose team lost 2-0 to Sweden in Abu Dhabi on Thursday in their final warm-up game before arriving in Malabo.

In a lopsided draw, the qualifiers from Group D are on a quarter-final collision course with the qualifiers from Group C, which features Algeria – the continent’s leading nation in FIFA rankings – Ghana and Senegal as well as a resurgent South Africa.