AFCON qualifiers re-commence
The race to Cameroon 2022 finally returns after an entire year’s hiatus
The slow opening up of borders across Africa, amid much caution over the coronavirus pandemic, means the resumption of Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers will be the first competitive football in a year for the continent’s national teams.
The preliminaries ahead of the next Cup of Nations finals are still only at the halfway stage and the tournament itself put back a year as a result of the COVID-19 crisis.
There are 23 places up for grabs at the finals, along with hosts Cameroon, who are competing in the preliminaries but guaranteed a berth at the finals.
The qualifying competition is set up such that it is virtually guaranteed that all the continent’s powerhouses should qualify, as the top two teams in each of the groups (except that of Cameroon) go on to the finals. Fourteen countries have previously won the African championship and the overwhelming majority of them should return for another tilt at the title. Only Ethiopia, long past their heyday of the early ’60s, and surprisingly Zambia look in peril of missing out. Ethiopia did have an impressive home win over the Ivory Coast last time out but will need to get more points, particularly home and away over Niger at the resumption of the qualifiers, to stay in realistic contention of qualifying.
Realistically, the Ivorians, despite all the tumult at association level, should scramble back to win the group and Ethiopia need to catch up to Madagascar, who head the Group K standings after registering victory in their opening pair of matches.
Madagascar debuted at the last finals in Egypt and proved the fairy-tale story of the tournament – their motley crew of players, drawn from clubs literally across the world, were eventually eliminated in the quarter-finals.
Burundi and Mauritania were the other newcomers at the 2019 finals – expanded to 24 teams for the first time – and there is avid interest in seeing if there might be more new faces at Cameroon 2022.
Of the 54 full members of the Confederation of African Football (CAF), there are now only 12 who have never been to the finals.
But The Gambia, coached by well-travelled Belgian Tom Saintfiet, have taken an early lead in a tough Group D after holding the Democratic Republic of Congo to a draw and then pulling off a shock away win in Angola.
They can consolidate their chances home and away against Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang’s Gabon in their latest round of qualifying.
The tiny Comoros islands top Group G, also punching above their weight by winning away in Togo and then holding Egypt to a goalless draw at home. They have the capability to take points off Kenya next, having put together a competitive team from a significant emigrant community in France, mostly based around Marseille.
Coach Amir Abdou, who lives in France, has been able to find players at clubs across Europe and build a side whose ability belies the small status of the island nation. Defender Fouad Bachirou, for example, is French born and a Paris Saint-Germain youth product who recently moved from Malmo in Sweden to Nottingham Forest.
The Central African Republic and the small mountain kingdom of Lesotho also hold out hope of a first-ever finals place. Lesotho are in the same group as Nigeria, who look certain to finish top, but could yet challenge Benin and Sierra Leone for the second qualifying berth.
The 2013 winners Zambia need to stage a major comeback if they are to qualify. They started their campaign with a heavy 5-0 defeat at champions Algeria in Group H in November last year and were then defeated at home by neighbours Zimbabwe.
Zambia have since appointed the Serbian Milutin Sredojevic as coach with the task of resurrecting their chances. He was the coach when Uganda returned to the finals for the first time in almost 40 years in 2017.
Fourteen countries have previously won the African championship and the overwhelming majority of them should return for another tilt at the title
Qualification is scheduled to be concluded in March after which there will be some ten months to prepare for the finals, now being held in early 2022. It is an inadvertent return to the days when the Cup of Nations was hosted in the same year as a World Cup.
CAF switched in 2013 to hosting the finals every odd year because they felt it was too big a clash on both a competitive and commercial level.
But the reality was that it also offered African qualifiers for the World Cup the unique advantage of having a competitive tournament to use as a warm-up. Too often, however, this was spurned particularly when coaches were fired after poor Nations Cup performances on the eve of World Cup tournaments, throwing teams into total turmoil. That is a real possibility that awaits again, between Cameroon 2022 and Qatar 2022.