The Council of Southern Africa Football Associations (COSAFA) 2019 will clash following the decision by CAF to shift the Africa Cup of Nations 2019 finals to June-July.
The COSAFA games, set to be hosted by Botswana next year, are staged the same time that the AFCON games, hosted by Cameroon, have been shifted to and they might be suspended to make way for Africa’s most prestigious soccer tournament.
The tournament Cup will be switched to the summer time and will include 24 countries for the 2019 edition in Cameroon. The top two in each qualifying group will reach the bi-annual tournament.
COSAFA chairman of the Organising Committee and former National Football Association of Swaziland (NFAS) vice president Timothy Shongwe said they were yet to meet and discuss the issues around that matter.
“We will be meeting on the December 5 to discuss competitions and only then I will be in a position to give proper feedback,” he said.
Swaziland, together with Zambia, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Mozambique, Lesotho are all in the AFCON qualifiers and also have the mandate to play in the COSAFA tournament because they fall under the region.
In the AFCON qualifiers, Sihlangu will host Tunisia on the weekend of September 3-11before playing twice against another World Cup-bound Egypt on the weekend of 8-16 in a bid to make their debut in the African showpiece.
Matches
Sihlangu will then play host to Niger in match Day Four of the matches scheduled for November 12-20 before visiting North African giants Tunisia in March 2019. Day Six dates of the qualifiers are yet to be revised and revealed by CAF.
The decision to shift the games from March was to allow the five African teams who 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.