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Since its inception in 1957, the biennial football competition has always taken center stage but sadly, it has failed to improve in recent years.
The 2019 AFCON is set to be the first time the tournament will be held in the months of June/July and also the edition that will feature for the first time 24 teams, as against the 16 teams that used to feature.
However, there is an impending danger looming due to the drama of stripping Cameroon off the hosting rights. Following the Central African country’s inability to meet the level of preparations needed, the hosting rights were granted to Egypt with less than five months to the competition.
This decision by CAF should be questioned because Cameroon originally was awarded the hosting rights in January 2014, three years before current CAF President Ahmad Ahmad was elected.
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Also, the tournament was initially set to feature 16 teams but the new CAF executives changed it to 24, in addition to moving the tournament from January/February to June/July.
The explanation for these decisions, according to the football governing body, is to increase participation for African players in Europe, in order to avoid a similar situation where Joel Matip and others refused to play for Cameroon during the 2017 AFCON.
But CAF should also know that most African countries are faced with financial difficulties, hence hosting a 24 team tournament would pose a logistics problem for most of these countries.
This is another reason to fault the decision to strip Cameroon off the hosting rights. The big question is, as stipulated by law the host country is expected to be at the tournament, what will happen if Cameron fails to qualify for the competition?
Away from Cameroon, Egypt was later given the hosting rights to host the 2019 edition and the big question is how ready is Egypt, too?
With just five months left for the competition to start, coupled with the fact that Egypt last hosted the competition 13 years ago and with an expanded number of teams, that would surely pose a bigger challenge to Egypt.
The success of the competition in Egypt will determine the continuity of the AFCON, and anything less could see other African nations abstain from hosting the tournament in the coming years.
By: Ayobami Okerinde