Climatic reasons justified this Sunday the seven-month postponement of the African Cup of Nations (CAN) from 2023 to January and February 2024, in Ivory Coast, announced the African Football Confederation (CAF).
“We don’t want to run the risk of have a competition under the flood. It would not be good for African football and its image, so we have to postpone the tournament,” CAF president Patrice Motsepe justified.
The decision was made in Rabat, Morocco, at the meeting of the CAF executive committee, thus changing the competition that was scheduled to take place between June 23 and July 23, 2023.
We made the decision as a matter of respect. We get a lot of feedback, and some people say that given climate change, maybe rain isn’t a problem. Even so, we received the notice that we cannot take that risk, ”explained the leader.
In June, traditionally the wettest month in the country, severe flooding caused by heavy rains killed at least five people in Abidjan, one of the CAN recipient cities, along with Bouaké, Yamoussoukro, Korhogo and San-Pedro.
Patrice Motsepe admitted, however, knowing that January “is not the ideal month” for the competition, since “European clubs are not always willing to release their best players.”
The CAN was held from the beginning of the calendar years until 2017, when the CAF executive committee moved it to the summer, with the 2019 edition being held in June and July, in Egypt.
The 2021 edition, in Cameroon, was changed several times, first at the request of the organizing country and then due to Covid-19, finally taking place in January and February 2022.
Weather aside, the manager assumed he was “very proud of the world-class infrastructure” that Côte d’Ivoire is buildingone of the reasons why he believes this competition will be “very special”.
Source: Observadora
