By Jafferson Ndhlovu,
Confederation of African Football is about to make a landmark change in the way qualifiers for its tournaments are made. Especially for the age groups.
Starting with the U17 AFCON 2019 to be hosted by Tanzania, qualifiers will be done through zonal tournaments.
At a symposium held in July in Rabat, Morroco it was proposed that qualifiers for youth competitions be played by zones. The proposition was quickly followed up by an executive meeting in Cairo Egypt attended representatives from UEFA and CAF on the 16th and 17th October led by the Acting Secretary General Essam Ahmed.
In attendance were zonal representative from South, Central East, North, West A and B. The Centre Zone was not present. Issues tabled related to periods, venues and formats to be used in the different qualifier phases.
The general consensus was the hosting of these zonal qualifiers in 2018 culminating in choosing the region representatives to join Tanzania the host nation.
Six zones will qualify a team each and the zone with the team holding the trophy will qualify an extra team to bring the number to seven plus Tanzania to complete the line up.
In implementing this project CAF has bound itself to a Memorandum of Understanding with UEFA which in turn CAF will benefit immensely from a multifaceted support from UEFA.
Each Zone has been mandated to submit a report by the end of October that will detail budget proposals, the formats to used and the hosting nations these particular mini tournaments.
