CAF confused over 2024 WAFCON, AFCON 2025 schedule due to FIFA competitions, Olympics

The Confederation of African Football (CAF) has admitted it faces an uphill task in releasing a time frame for Africa’s flagship tournaments: Women’s Africa Cup of Nations (WAFCON) and Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) for men, initially slated for 2024 and 2025 respectively.

Following the final round of qualifiers last December, 12 countries made it to the 15th edition of the women’s AFCON, which is going to be hosted by Morocco, following the North African country’s impressive display as the host in the 2023 edition that Banyana Banyana of South Africa won.

However, Nigeria and Zambia’s qualification for the Paris 2024 Olympics which is set to run from July 26 to August 11, nullifies the tentative mid-year schedule for the WAFCON.

“We are supposed to play this year but we have teams engaged in the Olympics, so we have to find another date,” CAF general secretary Mosengo-Omba told BBC Sport Africa.

“We are talking with UEFA because most of the players are playing in Europe, the European Club Association and also with Fifa in order to find [a] suitable date.”

Mosengo-Omba continued, “Do we play Women’s Afcon without our best players? This is something that personally I think is not good.

“We cannot come back by using only local (domestic-based) players. They are good, but the standard would not be the same.”

The same can be said for the 35th edition of AFCON which is also going to be hosted by Morocco. FIFA’s expanded 32-team Club World Cup is set to be held in the USA between June and July 2025, potentially clashing with the next edition of AFCON.

Back in 2017, CAF recommitted to staging AFCON mid-year to avoid disputes with European clubs who’ll be reluctant to release their players mid-season. CAF’s decision immediately came into play, and the 2019 AFCON was held between June -July 2019.

Subsequently, the next edition which was initially due to be played in the summer of 2021, had to be moved to January due to the predicted unfavourable climatic conditions in the host nation Cameroon in June and July. The COVID-19 pandemic which put all football activities on hold eventually saw CAF postpone the 33rd edition to January 2022.

The football body sought to return the 34th edition to 2023 summer, but adverse weather conditions in Côte d’Ivoire also meant the AFCON 2023 will be played between January and February 2o24.

Despite diverse reports that the 35th edition of the AFCON had been postponed from 2025 to January 2026, there has been no official statement from CAF.

“For the men, we need to make sure that the dates that we’ll be choosing will be in the interests of the players.

“For this, we need to balance different aspects and also discuss with our partners and then we complete [the dates]. Scheduling is a nightmare for everybody,” Mosengo-Omba told BBC.

Chad, Eswatini, Liberia, and South Sudan all qualified from the preliminary round of qualifiers that featured four other countries that made up the lowest FIFA-ranked team in Africa.

Following the conclusion of the preliminary qualifiers in March, a total of 48 countries are set to compete for 24 AFCON 2025 spots, but the date for the qualifiers draws is yet to be announced, making the competition’s timing increasingly controversial.