Should the African Cup of Nations be rescheduled for the summer?
If you didn’t know better, you’d think that this African Cup of Nations was a sneaky bastard. How dare it creep up on the Premier League clubs without them finding out until too late?
What? There’s an International Calendar for FIFA events? Damn…
Ok, but the sheer audacity of this tournament! How dare it disrupt the ‘Greatest League In The World’? What? 54 countries? A whole bloody continent? What the…
You know, I get it - teams are hamstrung by the African Cup of Nations because they lose key players over a very important period of the season. But here are several ways this ’shock’ could be avoided, or minimised:
- PLAN FOR IT! Bring in cover for key African players on short term loans or prepare players from your reserves to step in when necessary. Injuries? Well that sucks, yea, but no matter how good you are at injury prevention these things happen, and you need to be prepared with a contingency plan.
- Have a winter break - what a novel idea! A winter break will give non-African players in the Premier League some much needed rest and allow recoveries from injuries. It would also reduce the pressure on clubs during the ACN (the next ACN starts 10 days earlier in a bid to make it easier for European clubs to handle the biennial exodus).
- Keep Blatter and the press out of the decision-making process - sometimes it seems that the press pounds on a supposed public sentiment and Sepp Blatter, ever eager to do what the ‘people’ want (remember him telling the Australians that Italy did not deserve to be champions?), jumps on the bandwagon and proclaims it as his own idea. He did with the England manager post, he did with quotas (although that was more to do with following Platini) and he’s done it with the ACN. He can’t be trusted to make a decision for the good of the game, just as you wouldn’t trust the tabloids.
CAF (Confederation of African Football) says that the weather precludes playing the tournament in the summer. Why? Because unlike Germany (where a lot of players complained about the heat during the day / early afternoon matches), most of the African nations are quite close to the equator, and if you missed your geography lessons it’s bloody hot there in March, let alone June.
Unless everyone decides to play in South Africa every two years (somehow I doubt it), it can’t happen in June. The timing, whilst a tad bit unfortunate, is the best one.
Some have said that the frequency of the tournament should be reduced. Initially I thought the same thing - a tournament every four years would have been better, right? Except that the African nations have come across an excellent formula for developing the beautiful game across the continent and using it to bring countries and cultures together (and yes, there’s the economic aspect as well, which for a relatively poor continent like Africa is a GOOD thing). Every 2 years is good, and African football needs it.
Blatter:
“We put a target for 2016 that by that time the international calendar must be definitely in accordance with the interests of everybody.”
You mean the Europeans, surely?
Blatter continues to insist that by 2016 the ACN should be held in June and July - how the FIFA president can show such a disregard for local weather conditions is beyond me, but then again, this is Blatter and FIFA, it’s about par for the course.
- Manchester United sign 24-year old striker Manucho
- List of Premiership players to miss matches during African Cup of Nations
- African Cup of Nations - Ghana 2008 - Team Kits
- African Cup of Nations - Ghana 2008 - Fixtures & Results
- Is there too much international football?
Discussion - 8 Responses
Add Your Comment
Comments are moderated (our comments policy).
With respect to disrespecting weather conditions, its interesting to me that FIFA is against high-altitude games (e.g. Bolivia etc) but totally fine with absolutely hot & humid conditions that would surely tax the player’s physical fitness levels & make them completely useless for the following season at their respective clubs. Of course i’m sure that if Bolivia suddenly supplies 25% of Europe’s talent pool in the next 4 years this ruling could be reversed in favour of high-altitude matches.
But the whole point is only for short-term gain as football has become an ‘instant success necessity’ sport. So managers can underpay thier african players, use them for one or two seasons & if they get fucked over by their ACN experiences in June-July to the detriment of the rest of their careers then the clubs can always look for the ‘next’ big thing to come out of Africa which (lets face it) happens about once every week.
Here’s another thought. I’ve always felt that international football is more important than club football. It goes back to when i was a kid & all i watched was Maradona screwing over the English & the Italians in his awesome World Cup displays, when i had to look up Cameroon on the world map coz i thought Roger Milla was a really cool football player (even for a 38 year old). International football is how you REALLY develop local talent in different countries. Competitions like Copa America, Asian Cup (3 cheers for Iraq again btw…) & the ACN are important showcases of how good the countries are getting in developing this great sport on their own turf.
Personally, i hate it when managers (& i ain’t excluding Wenger here) belittle international football & think club football is the be-all & end-all. Seriously, if India were any fucking good at this sport i’d give up watching club football altogether & just watch my own team mix it up with the rest of the world.
Ahmed, i think you hit the nail on the head with this article, except if i were writing it i’d fill it with expletives for Harry Redknapp & Sepp Blatter & every screwy bureaucrat that screws up proper devlopment of the sport with their constant whinging & blatantly populist comments that put their own narrow self-interests above all else.
I would just love it if the CAF just gave a big middle finger to FIFA & carried on as usual. If the rich clubs get a migraine like this every 2 years then tough.
There is no reason to change the ACN from its current format. It is really a bit unfortunate for clubs who do have African players (see Chelsea), but that does not mean that everything should be done in concordance with what Abramovich & co. want. They should realise that this is part of every other football season and should stop trying to change it.
If this change is made than there would be no point in hosting intl tournaments at all, since clubs seem to have higher priority than national football.
Very true Spiral. It was the same FIFA, if I recall correctly, that forced France to play the confederations cup final in 2003 after Marc-Vivien Foe died. Ok, it was this sudden death syndrome I think but the conditions that day surely contributed to it. I will never forget seeing Thierry Henry crying during the anthem in the final I was more endeared to the person inside him as much as I was to the footballer already, in very stark contrast to Blatter.
Good food for thought Ahmed.
As you pointed out, the only solution to having the ACN be played in June, is to host it in the Southern hemisphere (i.e. where Summer and Winter months are inverted, compared to the Northern part of the world, i.e. including Europe). Unfortunately, South Africa seems to be the only country with structures and facilities capable of hosting such an event, which effectively precludes that solution from being adopted anytime soon.
As for Blatter’s never-ending quest of “improving the beautiful game”, I won’t even go there. This is the same man which, at some point or another, suggested the have the World Cup held every two years…
Blatter & co. sound as idiots.
If they are to change it to take place in June/July, what’s gonna happen in the year that also has the world cup? As far as i know this is also the time the world cup begins. Are they going to scrap Africa from participating in the world cup or..?
i remember during the 2006 ACN, harry rednap was complaining of how the tournament is useless and the next year, infact exactly after the tournament he rushed to buy african player the same players that were nartured by this so called useless tournament.
As for blatter, the fact that he has adamantly refused to include the ACN tournament on the Fifa Year Calendar shows how much little respect he has for it. then how jump to decide when he thinks it should be held. in fact on the opening game of ACN 2008 i saw him sit next to the Ghanian president and when Ghana scored the president clapped and as for Blatter he just sat with this gloomy face as if he’d lost his wife, not even a smile in appreciation.
But Isa Hayatou assured him, that as long as he’s still the president of CAF, the tournament will always be played in Jan/Feb.
FIFA should bite the bullet and block off the ANC month as a designated “international month”. Uefa should suspend club matches for a month and schedule the bulk of their internationals in the interim. The advantage would be fresh players, as they’ll be coming out of their winter break, less imposition to clubs as the “international week” is scrapped, less pressure on players to withdraw from international squads and more continuity as international teams get a decent run of games.
In fact, I like my proposal so much that I think the same should apply to the Asian and Gold Cups as well.
I’m Ipanema Bob.
A winter break should be instituted in the month of January till early Feb. Added what Ipanema said…The ANC shouldn’t be moved. In Africa it’s either too hot or too wet to play football. Besides, the ANC is even older than the European Championships. so it shouldn’t be shifting for anyone.
No, never! The ANC should not be rescheduled just because some kind of English Coach feels the pitch of African Footballers coming home for the Nations Cup. If African Footballers are so important to their survival, they should reschedule or suspend their UEFA competitions during the months of January/February. January/Feburary is the best weather in Africa when there are no rains…