The Confederation of African Football CAF has with immediate effect postponed all 2021 Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers, FIFA Women’s U20 qualifiers and the 2020 Women’s AWCON Qualifiers, which were scheduled to take place at the end of this month and at the beginning of April as a result of the Coronavirus outbreak.
CAF said in a statement on Friday that it had looked at various factors and decided to take action in the best interest of it’s stakeholders.
“Following the growing concerns of the COVID-19 virus and the declaration by the World Health Organization (WHO) describing it as pandemic, CAF has decided to postpone the following competitions until further notice:
- Total AFCON 2021 Qualifiers: Match Day 3 and 4 of the qualifiers scheduled for 25 – 31 March 2020;
- FIFA Women’s U-20 World Cup Qualifiers: scheduled for 20 – 22 March 2020 and 27- 29 March 2020;
- Total Women’s AFCON 2020 Qualifiers: scheduled for 8-14 April 2020.”
CAF says a new schedule shall be announced in due time.
“As CAF’s top priority remains the Health of our stakeholders (Players, Officials, Sponsors, Broadcasters, employees etc) we have been monitoring closely, together with our medical committee the impact of the current Coronavirus crisis and accordingly.”
CAF cites reasons for the postponment as due to the fact that the World Health Organization ha declared Coronavirus a pandemic and also that several players who are supposed to be involved in the AFCON qualifiers come from the countries that have been severely affected by the virus, that is Europe and Asia.
