2017-11-24Staff Report 2 Staff Reporter Windhoek-Namibia’s qualifiers for the Confederation of African Football (CAF) 2019 African Cup of Nations finals will be determined between September 2018 and March 2019 due to changes in CAF’s qualifiers calendar to allow Africa’s representatives at the 2018 FIFA World Cup enough time to prepare. The calendar was adjusted following the CAF Executive Committee decision taken at a meeting on 16 November 2017 in Rabat, Morocco, to postpone the Day Two matches of the Total Africa Cup of Nations Cameroon 2019 qualifiers. This would allow the five African teams that qualified for the FIFA World Cup Russia 2018, namely, Egypt, Morocco, Nigeria, Senegal and Tunisia, to take advantage of the March 2018 window to prepare for the global tournament. A CAF special committee consists of its chairmen Kwesi Nyantakyi and Kalusha Bwalya, and presidents of the qualified football associations. The Brave Warriors were due to play Zambia in their Group K qualifier on the weekend of 23 March at the Sam Nujoma Stadium. They will now host Zambia on the weekend of 8 September, while the away match and home match against Mozambique on match-day three and four, respectively, have been moved to between 8 and 16 October 2018. Match-day five, where Namibia host Guinea, who beat them 1-0 on match-day one in June this year, will be played between 12 and 20 November 2018 and the final qualifiers match-day six, will be played on 18-29 March 2019, as Namibia travels to Zambia. Mozambique head Group K with three points, with Guinea also on three points in second place, followed by Namibia and Zambia on zero points after losing their opening games. The group winner and runner-up will qualifier for the 2019 AFCON. The 2019 AFCON finals will be the 32nd edition of the African Cup of Nations and will be hosted by Cameroon in June and July 2019 as per the decision of the CAF Executive Committee on 20 July 2017 to move the Africa Cup of Nations from January/February to June/July for the first time. It will also be the first Africa Cup of Nations expanded from 16 to 24 teams. 2017-11-24Staff Report 2
