CAF Postpones AFCON 2021, CHAN 2020

The executive committee of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) has this week taken the decision to postpone upcoming tournaments, including the Total Africa Cup of Nations Cameroon 2021 and the Total African Nations Championship (CHAN) Cameroon 2020.

AFCON 2021 has now been rescheduled for January 2022, whereas CHAN 2020 has been postponed until January 2021. Both tournaments are expected to take place in Cameroon. 

Meanwhile, the Total Women’s Africa Cup of Nations 2020 has been cancelled, with the CAF Women’s Champions League to be launched in 2021

In addition, the Total CAF Champions League and Total CAF Confederation Cup, are set to resume this September with a final four format. The semi-final matches will be played in a single match. The Total CAF Confederation Cup final four will be hosted in Morocco, while the venue for the Total CAF Champions League is yet to be named. 

Reacting to the postponements national coach Milutin ‘Micho’ Sredojevic says the decision will help the Chipolopolo team reinvigorate themselves and work on its competitive advantage by refining their seven point technical master plan working towards world cup qualification.

“When someone asks us what it means to us, I will just say that it means we are fighting for competitive advantage,” Micho told media.

“We have no right to be reactive, we have to be proactive. We have no right to let things happen to us, but we have to happen to things. It means getting individual training programs, get these courses (goalkeeping and video analysis). It means getting back to competitiveness where all players will be assessed from all possible angles where we believe that once this is concluded we shall have much of our players are competitive and able to serve the nation in the best competitive way,” he explained.

“We are waiting for CAF to tell us what will happen to the qualifiers because we have seen UEFA has in September (2020) already lined up some League of Nations qualifiers. What will happen with us? We can assure you that we are in contact with CAF with the people in charge of competitions,” Micho continued.

“We are waiting for them to tell us so that we can re-adjust ourselves because under the circumstances we want to be generators of positive energy, we want to heal the soul of the nation from all this that has happened that we did not qualify in 2017 and 2019.”