African football's ruling body has announced that Afcon 2021, to be hosted in Cameroon, will go ahead as planned despite the spread of Covid-1.
Football worldwide has been on hold as a result of the pandemic, which has taken nearly 20,000 lives to date.
Recently, CAF announced the postponement of the 2020 African Nations Championship (CHAN) indefinitely, after hosts Cameroon had requested the rescheduling of the biennial tournament.
However, this is not the case for the Cup of Nations after CAF confirmed the dates will remain unchanged unless the situation changes.
Acting general secretary Abdelmounaim Bah believes the qualifiers can still be completed within the remaining international windows for 2020, thus there is no basis for a postponement at this stage.
Bah shared:
"For now, the Africa Cup of Nations is still scheduled for January to February 2021,
“The only reason we would shift Afcon would be a situation that continues into the year 2020, and if this current crisis does not allow us to play all the qualification matches.
"We still have four qualifying days to play and we can play them in two international windows.
“We have four at our disposal: June, September, October, November. At this point, anything is possible.
“If we can’t play matchdays three and four in June, we will play them otherwise in September or October and we will play match days five and six in November."
So far no team other than hosts Cameroon have qualified for the competition, with two of the six qualifying games played.
Afcon 2021 is the 33rd edition of the event and is scheduled to take place from January 9 to February 6.
