Bryan Mbeumo will not be appearing at next summer’s World Cup after Cameroon’s failure to qualify last week, but he will be part of their AFCON 2025 campaign next month.Amad and Noussair Mazraoui should also be at the tournament, representing Cote d’Ivoire and hosts Morocco respectively, and as a result, the trio will not be available for a number of Manchester United’s games over the busy Christmas period.United are not expected to be the Premier League side most severely affected by AFCON departures, but Ruben Amorim’s options on the right-hand side will be acutely depleted by their absences.Mbeumo has started all of United’s 11 Premier League games this season, often as Amorim’s right-sided No 10, and regularly in combination with Amad as right wing-back.

Mazraoui has three starts to his name, all as right wing-back.Amorim has long known that AFCON will pose a challenge.

“We are going to struggle a little bit, but we already knew it’s going to be an opportunity,” he said last month.And questions remain over when the players will report for international duty, how many games they will miss as a result, and how they will be replaced.

Here, The Athletic looks at the current state of play with United’s AFCON-bound players…When will the players receive call-ups?All three players are expected to receive call-ups when Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire and Morocco confirm their AFCON 2025 squads over the next month.Competing national associations have to submit provisional 55-man squad lists to the Confederation of African Football (CAF), AFCON’s organisers, by this coming Friday.The deadline for final squads to be submitted is 10 days before the start of the tournament — on December 11.

Yet in 2023, many competing nations announced their final squads and held pre-tournament training camps before the 10-day cut-off.Mazraoui is set to be selected by host nation Morocco (Ash Donelon/Getty Images)How many games will the players miss?Some national teams competing at AFCON 2025 have announced elements of their pre-tournament plans already, but Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire and Morocco are only expected to do so following the November international break.As it stands, Mbeumo, Amad and Mazraoui’s next international fixtures following this break will be their opening games of the tournament.As hosts, Morocco kick off AFCON 2025 against Comoros on December 21 — the same day as United’s Premier League trip to Aston Villa.

Cameroon and Côte d’Ivoire have been drawn together in Group F and begin against Gabon and Mozambique respectively on December 24.The earliest that any of the three players could return to Manchester would be after their final group game — December 29 in Mazraoui’s case, and December 31 for Mbeumo and Amad.The latest that they could fly back would be following the final on January 18, the day of the 198th Manchester derby at Old Trafford.The trio are likely to miss at least three Christmas fixtures — Aston Villa away, and Newcastle and Wolverhampton Wanderers at home — and potentially a further four games, including the FA Cup third round.But the exact number of games they will miss does not only depend on how far they progress through the tournament.

It also rests on how early they will be released to their national associations.

When will the players report for international duty?FIFA’s Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players (RSTP) state that players called up for an international tournament must be released by their clubs and start to travel “no later than Monday morning the week preceding the week” that the tournament begins.In the case of AFCON 2025, that date is December 8 — the morning of United’s Monday night Premier League visit to Wolverhampton Wanderers.

If those regulations were strictly followed, Mbeumo, Amad and Mazraoui would miss that trip to Molineux.But engagements between CAF and European Football Clubs (ECF, formerly the European Club Association) in recent years have resulted in greater leniency being shown towards these rules, and have led to AFCON-bound players being permitted to fulfil club fixtures beyond the deadline set out in RSTP.For example, Nottingham Forest had the most representatives of any Premier League side at the last edition of AFCON, but had four AFCON-bound players as part of their matchday squad for a 1-0 victory over United in December 2023, a day after they were due to be released for duty.And ahead of the 2021 tournament, CAF agreed to allow Premier League players to fulfil club fixtures up until six days before the tournament began.There is general expectation across the Premier League that very few AFCON-bound players will need to report for international duty as early as December 8.Yet there remains a question mark around the following weekend’s round of fixtures, once competing nations begin their pre-tournament preparations in earnest.

United’s meeting with Bournemouth at Old Trafford on December 15, the following Monday night, is less than a week away from the first game of the tournament.CAF say that, as in previous years, they have engaged with ECF around the release of players for AFCON 2025 and are working towards a solution based on “mutual interest” between clubs and national teams.Mbeumo will miss at least three Premier League fixtures (Ben Roberts/Getty Images)Could the players join up later?FIFA’s RSTP rules also allow for clubs and national associations to agree to “different arrangements”, delaying the release of players if necessary, such as in the case of Andre Onana two years ago.Onana came out of international retirement for Cameroon a few months before AFCON 2023 began.

Having signed the goalkeeper believing he would not feature at the tournament, United agreed with the Cameroon Football Federation (FECAFOOT) to maximise his playing time at club level.Onana only joined up with the Cameroon squad on January 15, the day of their opening game, travelling immediately after playing in United’s 2-2 draw against Tottenham Hotspur.

United covered the cost of the flight.But after his arrival in the Ivorian capital Yamoussoukro was delayed by adverse weather conditions, Onana was not selected by Cameroon head coach Rigobert Song for the 1-1 draw with Guinea.

Song argued that leaving Onana out was only logical, adding: “How can you arrive at 4am and play at 5pm?”And although Onana was reinstated to the starting line-up for the second group game against Senegal, he was then dropped and did not play in Cameroon’s remaining games before their round-of-16 elimination against Nigeria.Although a later release date was agreed for Onana, it should be noted that the United goalkeeper’s situation was an exceptional one, on account of him unexpectedly coming out of international retirement shortly before the tournament.And given the disruption caused by Onana’s late arrival, whether Cameroon and other national associations would be willing to agree to delayed release dates remains to be seen.

United are yet to formally discuss individual release dates with Mbeumo, Amad and Mazraoui’s respective associations.What are Amorim’s options?Whenever Mbeumo, Amad and Mazraoui join up with their national teams, the likelihood is that Amorim will be without his first-choice right-hand side and a senior back-up for much of the festive period, likely stretching into the new year, and will have to turn to others within the squad.“When I watch the training, there are players that should be playing, but it’s hard with one game to take some players from the team, because they are doing well also during the training, in games,” he said recently, regarding the AFCON departures.

“So other players are going to have the opportunity to help us.”Diogo Dalot would be the natural replacement at right wing-back, which would likely clear the path for Patrick Dorgu to start regularly at left wing-back.Dorgu’s only natural first-team back-up is Tyrell Malacia, who is yet to play a minute this season but has been reintegrated into the fold despite being part of the five-man bomb squad during the summer window.Diego Leon, the teenage left-back signed in an initial $4m deal from Paraguayan club Cerro Porteno this summer, is yet to make his senior debut and has been limited to under-21s minutes up to this point.Up front, Mason Mount is the obvious replacement for Mbeumo.

Mount has typically played as the left-sided No 10 under Amorim, rotating with and deputising for Matheus Cunha, but he was used in the right-hand role on occasion last season and often played there under Thomas Tuchel at Chelsea.United’s AFCON absences could provide an opportunity for younger players like Shea Lacey, who has caught the eye at under-21 level this season after two years disrupted by injury.Like Mbuemo and Amad, Lacey is a left-footed winger who plays predominantly off the right.

The 18-year-old has trained with the first team squad on several occasions this season, and was also given the opportunity to work with the senior England squad at St George’s Park in October.An England Under-20 international who scored in Friday’s 1-1 draw with Japan, Lacey is one of a handful of academy players that Amorim is keeping a particularly close eye on, but he is yet to travel with the squad on matchdays, let alone make the substitutes bench.That could change once United’s squad depth is depleted by AFCON, but equally, there are no guarantees for the youngster just yet.