The Confederation of African Football -(CAF), has announced the postponement of the 2022 FIFA World Cup qualifications matches from June to September.
”The CAF Emergency Committee, in consultation with FIFA, decided to postpone the CAF qualifiers for the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 that were due to be played in June 2021 after taking into consideration the current challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the need to ensure the optimal playing conditions for all participating teams,” Caf said in a statement on Thursday.
”The qualifiers will now take place in the existing windows of September, October and November 2021, and March 2022.
”CAF is reassessing its protocols and processes to enhance the implementation of COVID-related protocols, including specifically focusing on pre-match testing which had been the source of some challenges in previous windows.
”Full details on the updated match schedule will be provided in due course.” the statement added.
Meanwhile, the postponement will offer countries with stadia issues the opportunity to fix them before September.