Confederation Of Africa Football (CAF) has postponed AFCON 2023. The African football body has officially announced new dates for the 34th edition of the African Cup of Nations competition scheduled to take place in Ivory Coast.
CAF announced that the competition which was scheduled to start on June 2023 has been postponed to January 2024 because of the weather forecast in Ivory Coast during that period.
The governing body of African football declared on Sunday through President Dr. Patrice Motsepe, that the 34th edition, which was previously slated for June 23 to July 23, 2023, will not be played as planned due to the weather in the West African nation.
While speaking during an interview with the media in Morocco, he said: “The 2023 AFCON will now be played between January and February 2024.
“This is one of the issues we discussed during our congress meeting here in Morocco and the official dates will be communicated later.
“It is after deliberations we came into the decision, we have partners and even though we make decisions, it is out of respect that we take the advice we are getting that we cannot take a risk [to host the tournament] and so that is why we have made the necessary announcement today [Sunday].”
The Africa Cup of Nations scheduled to be held in June and July next year in Ivory Coast has been pushed back to January-February 2024 in a bid to avoid the rainy season, it was announced Sunday. | @Sport24news https://t.co/NTRW6RgNaP
— News24 (@News24) July 3, 2022
According to Dr. Patrice Motsepe, it’s not good for Africa to play a mighty tournament like AFCON under bad weather, stating that it’s not good for the continent as a whole.
He also appreciated Ivory Coast for the efforts they have put in place to make sure that the tournament holds next year but the weather is posing as a huge obstacle.
Following the final decision at the Confederation Of Africa Football Executive Committee meeting on September 20, 2014, the African body announced Guinea, Cameroon, and Ivory Coast as the hosts of the 2019, 2021, and 2023 AFCON tournaments, respectively.
Senegal won the most recent AFCON, which was hosted in Cameroon, after defeating Egypt on penalties in the final match.
The original date for the competition was April 4 to April 25, 2020, but on March 17, 2020, the Confederation Of Africa Football (CAF) declared that the competition had been postponed until a later time because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Even though they initially said the last AFCON competition will take place in January 2020, it actually happened earlier this year. Liverpool’s manager Jurgen Klopp criticized the competition by calling it a “small competition” even though two of his star players Sadio Mane, who’s now a Bayern Munich player, and Mohamed Salah were involved in it.
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