The Confederation of African Football (CAF) has announced the new international calendar for the remaining 2023 Africa Cup of Nations qualifying matches.
The African countries were to continue with the third and fourth round of qualifiers in September but the matches have been pushed back to March next year to help the continent’s teams prepare for the World Cup in Qatar,
CAF, in a statement released on Sunday, disclosed the remaining Africa Cup of Nations matches will be played starting March 2023.
“The Confederation of African Football (“CAF”)_ Executive Committee has approved a revised TotalEnergies Africa Cup of Nations Cote d’Ivoire 2023 revised qualification calendar,” said CAF in a statement.
“This was necessitated by the Executive Committee’s commitment to make room for the African nations that have qualified for the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 in November/ December 2022 to prepare adequately.
“Consequently, the September 2022 TotalEnergies Africa Cup of Nations Cote d’Ivoire match day three and match day four qualifiers have been moved to 20-28 March 2023.
“Match day five will now be on 12-20 June 2023 while match day six will be played on 4-12 September 2023.”
Senegal, Cameroon, Ghana, Morocco and Tunisia will be representing the continent in the 2022 FIFA World Cup that will be played in Qatar.
Africa Cup of Nations that was scheduled for the Ivory Coast from June 2023 was recently pushed to January 2024 due to the weather conditions in the West African country.
The last edition of the AFCON was held in Cameroon where Senegal emerged the winners after defeating Egypt on penalties in the final. Originally the tournament was scheduled to be played from April 4 to 25, 2020.
