AFCON 2023 Draw To Be Held In South Africa

The draw for the 2023 African Cup of Nations (AFCON) tournament will be held in Johannesburg on Tuesday, 19 April 2022, it was announced by the Confederation of African Football (CAF) yesterday. 

The qualifiers for the tournament which will take place in Ivory Coast next year, and are scheduled for June 2022, were initially expected to be four rounds of matches in the first round but now they have been reorganized into three different rounds between June 2022 and March 2023. 

iDiski times understands that the draw in Johannesburg will be attended by some top officials from CAF, including some of the ambassadors of the tournament who will include legends of African football. 

The preliminaries for the AFCON qualifiers were concluded during the recent international week in March, and a total of 48 teams are expected to go into the hat for the draw and make 12 groups. Countries like Zimbabwe and Kenya are in danger of missing out if their FIFA bans are not lifted before the draw. 

Bafana Bafana who missed out on qualifying for the 33rd edition of the AFCON tournament in Cameroon earlier this year is expected to be in Pot 2, with the top two teams in each group set to qualify for the final tournament in Ivory Coast. 

CAF announced via a statement the draw dates of upcoming competitions 2023 AFCON qualifications group stages, 2023 CHAN tournament and 2022 Women’s Africa Cup of Nations.

In July 2022, Morocco will take the centre stage when it hosts the continent’s flagship women’s competition, the 2022 Women’s Africa Cup of Nations and the draw is scheduled to take place in Morocco on April 25, 2022.

The 2023 CHAN qualifiers will kick off in July 2022, with the tournament set to take place in Algeria next year. The official draw for the qualifiers will be on April 28, 2022.

For the 2023 AFCON qualifications calendar, the Organising Committee approved modifications to the June 2022 window.

This is also to accommodate the five African nations that are going to the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar to have enough time to prepare for the tournament in the form of international friendly matches in between the qualifiers in October and early November.  

Senegal, Ghana, Morocco, Cameroon and Tunisia are the five countries that will represent Africa at the Qatar World Cup from 21 November until 18 December 2022. 

Below is the summary of the modifications:

Story by: @Velile_Mnyandu