A member of the Confederation of African Football [CAF] Communication Department, Ibrahim Saanie Daara, has explained why the 2023 African Cup of Nations [AFCON] has been postponed to 2024.
The continent’s most prestigious competition, which was scheduled to take place in June of 2023 in Ivory Coast, has been postponed to January 2024 after a meeting in Rabat over the weekend.
Explaining why it was important for CAF to postpone the match, Saanie Daara indicated that CAF has been advised by experts to move the date for the tournament due to the torrential rainfall patterns in West Africa.
“In 2019 at the same time in June the AFCON was held in Egypt and we had no problems at all even though it was hot,” Saanie Daara, who is a former Ghana Football Association Communications Director told GTV Sports+.
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“The problem that torrential rainfall brings is that it will lead to unforeseen postponement of fixtures which will disturb the calendar of the competiton itself as it will lead to postponement of matches, rescheduling of matches. It will trickle down on telecasting of the match and more.
“Some countries can host it in the middle of the rainfall because they have a good drainage system. But given what happened this month in Ivory Coast that there were floods all over the place, it is the analysis of the experts that it will be safe the AFCON be hosted in January where the weather will be favourable for everybody,” he added.
Some football fans had raised eyebrows at the postponement of the tournament to 2024 since it would affect clubs in Europe.