CAPE TOWN, South Africa — The next African Cup of Nations will again clash with the European season and likely give rise to more club vs. country friction and disgruntlement over the release of players after organizers decided to postpone it until January 2024, AP reported.
The decision was announced Sunday by the Confederation of African Football and was prompted by the weather in host nation Ivory Coast, CAF said.
The tournament was due to take place in June and July 2023 — a slot chosen to coincide with the European leagues’ summer break — but Ivory Coast experiences heavy rain at that time of year and that threatened to badly affect Africa’s showpiece tournament.
CAF said it had received a report from a technical group that staging the African Cup in mid-year in Ivory Coast would have “adverse” effects.
It’s been a familiar problem for CAF, which had made a long-term commitment to move the African Cup from its traditional January-February slot to the middle of the year.
But a decision in 2014 to stage three straight African Cups in Central and West Africa undermined that because of the problematic mid-year weather in that part of the continent. This year’s tournament in Cameroon was also due to be played in June and July but had to be moved back to the January-February slot because of Cameroon’s monsoon season. The next African Cup after Ivory Coast is in Guinea, another West African country, and may well throw up the same problem.
European clubs have consistently complained about being forced to release some of their biggest stars for the African Cup, sometimes for more than a month, right when they face the crucial run-in to their league seasons. The African Cup also comes around every two years and not every four like other major international soccer tournaments.
Ahead of Cameroon’s African Cup, some clubs threatened to block their players going, although Africa’s biggest names like Senegal’s Sadio Mané, Egypt’s Mohamed Salah and Algeria’s Riyad Mahrez did play. World body FIFA eventually found a compromise by allowing clubs to delay the release of their players to the African Cup, but that also causes problems on the other side when African teams have less time — sometimes just days — to prepare their players for their continent’s top tournament.
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