The Emergency Committee of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) has postponed the group stage of the African 2022 World Cup qualifiers till September, Completesports.com reports.
This was made known in a statement released on CAF’s official website on Thursday.
The qualifiers were originally billed for June but due to continued fears over coronavirus, the body has decided to fix the commencement of the qualifiers till September.
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“The CAF Emergency Committee, in consultation with FIFA, decided to postpone the CAF qualifiers for the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 that were due to be played in June 2021 after taking into consideration the current challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the need to ensure the optimal playing conditions for all participating teams.
“The qualifiers will now take place in the existing windows of September, October and November 2021, and March 2022.
“CAF is reassessing its protocols and processes to enhance the implementation of COVID-related protocols, including specifically focusing on pre-match testing which had been the source of some challenges in previous windows.
“Full details on the updated match schedule will be provided in due course.”
The Super Eagles are in Group C with Cape Verde, Central Africa Republic and Liberia.
The top teams in each of the 10 groups will go into a play-off to decide the five countries that will represent Africa at next year’s World Cup in Qatar.
By James Agberebi
7 Comments
By September all the players except those with contraindications shall have been immunized against COVID-19. Pre-match testing should be handled by CAF, and not the individual FAs for obvious reasons.
How can Africans compete with the world when the so-called leaders are devising dirty strategies to cheat?
will be enough time to organize friendly in june
Exactly, this is an opportunity for friendly matches..
By Sept it would be time for new seasons in different leagues and simy, ouachua , saqid and Co would have to prove themselves again to deserve to be listed
I only hope the NFF will utilize these vacant windows to attract friendly matches for the Super Eagles. Also, I want to encourage the NFF President MR. Melvin Pinnick to please use his good office as FIFA Council Member to expedite action on the change of nationality for Ademola Lookman, Ejaria and Ike Ugbo who are been delay by FIFA. We now have time to complete this process before September when the qualifiers will commence. God bless Nigeria.
I don’t like this news at all, I am really disappointed in caf, they always look for reasons to postpone matches, europe that have covid-19 will play their Nations cup this year while Africa with lower record already postponed theirs to 2022, just to hide their shame, if cameroun cannot host their many countries who can do it without any long preparation,
Now it’s the wcup qualifications The are postponing just because few countries are not prepared, if these countries are not prepared, they should come and play their matches in uyo, after all nigeria will be making use of Lagos.
By September who knows if our players will be inform the way they are now, I don’t want to miss balogun, ndidi, osihmen, in any of these matches we know what happened the last time.
Wallahi I am not at all happy with this development!
Abeg who do African leader like this na???
Why is it that everything is so poor about us?
Tomorrow we will say that we will catch up with the European! How can Africa catch with this nonsense?
Tomorrow African will be clamouring for their players to be released by the European clubs? How they can be released while we had built an excuseable platform for them?
Tomorrow(Godforbid) we may complain that we lost Olise to France; why won’t we loose him to France when they are more organized than us?
African never seems to improve at all in the poor running of their affairs.
Wish we can fix 2solid friendly matches to unite these wonderful set of players in june.
Na African bring covid19 abi na we the thing dey affect pass?
My guy, I tire oh, africa is so annoying sometimes, believe me by June olise will get a bigger club and we may lose him by that time, what is wrong with these current Africa leaders,
Imagine george weah went to record a song for covid-19, when liberia don’t have a football field, I think george weah have been inniciated into the witchcraft covun of africa leaders.