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| Ivory Coast national football team sing their national anthem during the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations Group H qualifying match against Lesotho played in Soweto, South Africa on June 9, 2022. |
The next Africa Cup of Nations will be played in
Ivory Coast in 2024, and not 2023, Confederation of African Football (Caf)
president Patrice Motsepe said on Sunday.
The tournament was to be hosted in June-July 2023,
which is the height of the rainy season in Ivory Coast.
“We cannot take the risk,” the South
African said in the Moroccan capital Rabat.
With the World Cup in Qatar taking place in November
and December this year, the decision has been taken to postpone the finals
rather than bring them forward.
It means the Nations Cup will be held in January and
February for the second time in a row, after this year’s tournament in
Cameroon.
In 2017, Caf announced that it would move the finals
from their traditional January-February slot to June-July in a bid to avoid
repeated disputes with European clubs forced to release players in the middle
of the season.
“January is not the ideal time because of the
European clubs, but it is the only choice we have,” Motsepe added.
Under former Caf president Issa Hayatou, who was
overthrown in 2017, African football’s ruling body refused to countenance any
possible change of date for the months the continent’s flagship sports event is
hosted.
Yet just four months after taking charge, Hayatou’s
successor – Ahmad of Madagascar – turned this policy on its head following
consultation with the continent’s officials.
Caf Secretary-General Veron Mosengo-Omba said there
are no plans to permanently move the finals back to January-February given the
contrasting weather patterns across the continent at different times of the
year.
When asked why it took Caf so long to make a
decision on this matter, given that June and July have been the rainy seasons
in Ivory Coast for many years, Motsepe failed to directly address the question
– saying the choice had been made ‘out of courtesy’ with Ivorian organisers.
Both Motsepe and Mosengo-Omba were speaking in
Morocco, which is hosting the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations.
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