The Confederation of African Football has picked September 14 as date for the draw of the 2nd Africa U-23 Cup of Nations, which is set for Senegal between November 28 and December 12 this year.
The tournament, at which Africa’s three flag-bearers at the Men’s Football Tournament of next year’s Olympics in Rio de Janeiro will emerge (with a fourth team playing off against an Asian side), will hold in Dakar and M’Bour – the two cities that also hosted the African Youth Championship earlier this year.
Nigeria’s U-23 team, coached by Samson Siasia, is one of eight teams qualified to participate at the competition, after a 2-1 aggregate win over Congo-Brazzaville in the final round of qualifiers concluded earlier this month.
Host Senegal will be joined by Nigeria, Algeria, Egypt, Tunisia, Mali, Zambia and South Africa.
Also, at its meeting, the CAF Executive Committee confirmed that the draw for the 4th African Nations Championship, scheduled for Rwanda between January 16 and February 7, 2016, will take place in Kigali on November 18.
At the same meeting, CAF decided to rename its competitions, except the Africa Cup of Nations, the African Nations Championship, the CAF Champions League and the CAF Confederation Cup.
Other competitions will now be known and addressed as Africa Women Cup of Nations (formerly African Women Championship); Africa U-23 Cup of Nations (formerly African U-23 Championship); Africa U-20 Cup of Nations (formerly African Youth Championship); Africa U-17 Cup of Nations (formerly African U-17 Championship); Africa Beach-Soccer Cup of Nations (formerly African Beach Soccer Championship) and; Africa Futsal Cup of Nations (formerly African Futsal Championship).
A CAF inspection team will visit Rwanda between August 23 and 27 to appraise the state of preparedness for the 4th African Nations Championship and also have working sessions with the Local Organizing Committee.