By Paul Nicholson
February 25 – The Confederation of African Football (CAF) has awarded Kenya the rights to host the 2018 African Nations Championship (Chan), Rwanda will host 2016. CAF has also outlined details of the Morocco 2015 Orange Cup of Nations (CAN).
The Morocco 2015 championship will be from January 17 to February 7, 2015 in the cities of Rabat, Agadir, Tangier and Marrakech.
51 countries will participate at the qualifying stage of the event, the top 21 according to the CAF rankings will start from the group stage while the other seven teams for the group phase will qualify via preliminary rounds.
The countries that go straight through to the qualifying group stagea are reigning champions Nigeria, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Zambia, Burkina Faso, Mali, Tunisia, Algeria, Angola, Cape Verde. Togo, Egypt, South Africa, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Gabon, Niger, Guinea, Senegal, Sudan and host nation; Morocco.
The preliminary stage of the qualifiers will begin on April 11 with four lowest ranked countries playing to provide two qualifiers for the second knockout round where they will face the other 26 countries between May 16 and June 1 in a two-legged round to leave 14 countries who will go through to the third round.
The third knockout round wil procide seven qualifiers for the group qualifying stages that will be played September 5 to November 10.
The draw for the knockout stages (Second Round & Third Round) and the group stage will be held on Sunday, 27 April 2014 in Cairo, Egypt.
While the Cup of Nations is the premier CAF championship, CHAN has become an important second-tier tournament for home-based players only. Earlier this year Libya beat World Cup qualifiers Ghana to win the tournament, which was held in South Africa.
Kenya, who will host 2018 have generally performed poorly in CHAN, with the Harambee Stars failing to qualify since 2006. The country’s football federation has been through a tumultuous time recenty but now looks to be on a securer management footing.
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