Confederation of African Football (CAF) Communication Member, Ibrahim Saanie Daara, attributes the rescheduling of the 2023 AFCON from the summer of next year to January, 2024 to the recent torrential downpours in many parts of Africa.
The continent's highest football governing body announced the postponement of the 2023 AFCON to January 2024 in Ivory Coast over the weekend.
The AFCON have been played in January for more than two decades but the clash with various domestic club competitions especially in Europe poses a great threat.
Clubs have been reluctant to allow their their players grace the prestigious tournament on the continent in the middle of the season.
Rainfall also poses a significant challenge if the tournament is staged in the summer, June or July, because Africa is in the tropics and experienced continuous downpours at that period.
Experts have called for the tournament to be held in its current schedule, January of the year.
Saanie Daara says the AFCON taking place in June or July will lead to postponement of fixtures and affect television broadcast because of the rainfall.
“The problems that torrential rainfall brings is that it will lead to unforeseen postponement of fixtures, which will disturb the calendar of the competition itself as it will lead to postponement of matches, rescheduling of matches," he told GTV Sports+.
"It will trickle down on telecasting of the matches and more."
He however admitted that, some host nations can organise it in the summer because of their drainage systems at the stadium.
“Some countries can host it in the middle of the rainfall because they have a good drainage system."
"But given what happened this month in Ivory Coast that there were floods all over the place, it is the analysis of the experts that it will safe the AFCON be hosted in January where the weather will be favorable for everybody,” he concluded.
By: Abdul Razak Salim
