By DEWAH Fabrice TEH
Sports writer, Kick442.com-Cameroon
While the rest of Africa join the Confederation of African Football continue to celebrate Cameroon’s 2021 Africa Cup of Nations tournament organization success, this Pan-African sports news portal can reveal that the 2023 tournament which was initially scheduled to take place in June and July 2023 can longer go as planned.
The 2023 event to be hosted by Ivory Coast, will not maintain its original schedule due to the congested international calendar in the next five years per findings and analysis by this portal.
In March 2022, shortly after the end of the 2021 edition of the AFCON in Cameroon, they will be the continuation of the qualifiers to the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar with ten African countries to get engaged in the knock-out stages of the planetary football festival.
Three months after the 2022 World Cup qualifiers, they will be start of the preliminary stage of the qualifiers to the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations.
Between September and October 2022, countries to participate in the 2022 FIFA World Cup will be holding preparations ahead of the tournament.
The 2022 World Cup event will be organized between November and December 2022.
Three months later in March 2023, the first and second games of the group stages of qualifiers to the 2023 AFCON will be held.
In June of the same year, day 3 and 4 matches of qualifiers to the 2023 AFCON will be staged.
The final two days of the qualification games will be played in September 2023.
This calendar automatically imposes the need for the postponement of the 2023 tournament with Ivory Coast to stage the event in January and February 2024 at least.
The tournament could also be pushed to June and July of 2024 though the climatic condition of the West African country makes the organization of the tournament during that period extremely complicated and almost impossible since the Ivory Coast has summer periods between December and February like the case of Cameroon and not between June and July.
AFCON 2021 schedule still unchanged
However as it stands, the calendar of the 2021 AFCON remains fixed and will be held in January and February 2022 despite some comments on the uncertain future of the tournament to be hosted by Cameroon.
The president of the Confederation of African Football-CAF, Dr. Patrice Motsepe is presently in Cameroon to hold discussions with Cameroonian authorities on the effective organization of the Pan-African football festival.
The visit of the continent’s football boss comes barely a day after CAF executive members met in Doha-Qatar on Sunday December 19 and voted in favour of the the holding of the 2021 event as planned for January 9 to February 6, 2022.
A total of 24 nations will compete to replace Algeria as African champions during the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations tournament in Cameroon.
FIFA Calendar and possible activities between now and January 2024
March 2022: FIFA World Cup Qualifiers Play Off
June 2022: AFCON ‘2023’ Qualifiers Preliminaries
September-October 2022: World Cup Teams Hold Preparations
November-December 2022: 2022 FIFA World Cup Qatar
March 2023: AFCON Qualifiers Matches 1 and 2
June 2023: AFCON Qualifiers Matches 3 and 4
September 2023: AFCON Qualifiers Matches 5 and 6
January 2024: AFCON 2023 Ivory Coast
The decision about the 2023 tournament will be made during the CAF Executive committee meeting before the end of the 2021 tournament in January-February 2022 in Cameroon.
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