CHAN DRAW NOW HOLDS ON 15TH NOVEMBER 2015

The Confédération Africaine de Football in consultation with Rwandan authorities and the Local Organising Committee of the Orange African Nations Championship (CHAN), Rwanda 2016, have announced that the date of the official draw for the final tournament will now take place on Sunday, 15 November 2015 in Kigali at 18H00 local time as against the earlier announced 18th of November 2015.

Two Rwandan Cities Gisenyi, Butare Plus the Capital Kigali will host the final tournament of the fourth edition of the CHAN from 16th January to 7th February 2016.

16 have qualified for the tournament and they are listed here in alphabetical order: Angola, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, DR Congo, Ethiopia, Gabon, Guinea, Mali, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, Uganda, Rwanda (Host), Tunisia, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

Eagles fly to Ouagadougou

The delegation of Nigeria’s home –based senior team, Super Eagles B, will fly out to Ouagadougou, capital of Burkina Faso, on Friday night ahead of Sunday’s 2016 African Nations Championship final qualifying match against the Etalons of Burkina Faso.

A chartered ARIK Air aircraft will fly out of the Port Harcourt International Airport at about 5.30pm Nigeria time, and will land in the Burkinabe capital after about two-and-half hours.

NFF 2nd Vice President/LMC Chairman, Mr. Shehu Dikko will lead a delegation that also includes Chairman of NFF Technical Committee, Chief Felix Anyansi-Agwu, Deputy General Secretary Emmanuel Ikpeme, Deputy Director of Competitions, Ayobola Oyeyode and Assistant Director of Communications, Ademola Olajire.

There will also be 22 players, 13 technical and backroom staff, a number of stakeholders, some NFF staff, a couple of media representatives and members of the Nigeria Football Supporters Club.

The Super Eagles will have the official training at the August 4 Stadium in Ouagadougou on Saturday evening, with the match to start at 4.00pm (5pm Nigeria time) on Sunday at the same venue.

On Friday, NFF President Amaju Pinnick charged the Eagles B to do Nigeria proud by not only going to Ouagadougou to earn the ticket to Rwanda 2016, but by also defeating their opponents.

“I believe you can do it because, with a bit more luck, you could have won the first leg by a much bigger margin. There is no longer anything called home advantage in international football. The turf is where the business is done, and the better team will always triumph. I know you are the better team.

Super Eagles

“I want you to forget everything about a 2-0 advantage from the first leg. Sunday is another day and you should aim for 90 minutes of excellence.”

The Eagles will be without Head Coach Sunday Oliseh, who became dizzy and weak after lunch on Thursday and flew to Belgium Thursday night on the advice of Super Eagles’ medics.

CAF has appointed Mohamed Ragab Omara from Libya as the referee for Sunday’s match, with his compatriots Foaad Mohamed El Maghrabi, Baesus Safe-El Naser and Abdallah Baesus Ashraf as assistant 1, assistant 2 and reserve referee respectively.

The match commissioner is renowned former FIFA referee from Mauritania, Idrissa Sarr.

CHAN 2016 & BEACH SOCCER CHAMPIONSHIP DRAWS FOR APRIL 5

The draws for the 4th edition of the African Nations Championship (CHAN) Rwanda 2016 qualifiers and the African Beach Soccer Championship Seychelles 2015 will be held on Sunday, 5 April 2015 at 16H00 (local time) at the CAF Headquarters in Cairo, Egypt.

For the CHAN qualifiers, 42 teams are engaged for the draw to be conducted according to zonal distributions of the National Associations affiliated to CAF.

They engaged teams are;

*Northern Zone (2 spots) – Libya, Morocco, Tunisia

*Zone West A (2 spots) – Gambia, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Senegal, Sierra Leone

*Zone West B (3 spots) – Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Niger, Nigeria, Togo

*Central Zone (3 spots) – Cameroon, Central African Republic, Congo, Chad, DR Congo, Gabon

*Central-East Zone (3 including hosts) – Burundi, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda

*Southern Zone (3 spots) – Angola, Botswana, Comoros, Mauritius, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia, Zimbabwe

There will be two rounds each for the qualifiers except for the Northern Zone, where the three teams will play each other on a round-robin basis with the top two qualifying for the final tournament.

The qualifiers will start from the weekend of 19-21 June 2015 through to 28-30 August 2015 where 15 teams will emerge to join hosts Rwanda for the final tournament from 16 January to 7 February 2016.

Previous winners of the CHAN, a tournament designed exclusively for footballers playing in their domestic leagues are DR Congo (2009), Tunisia (2011) and Libya (2014).

Regarding the African Beach Soccer Championship, the identity of the complete qualified teams will be known by 29 March 2015.

Already, Ghana, Egypt, Madagascar and Nigeria have confirmed their places alongside hosts Seychelles, for the final tournament scheduled from 14-19 April 2015.

The finalists will qualify to represent Africa at the FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup from 9-19 July 2015 in Portugal.