The UNIFFAC region of qualifying for the 2023 Africa U-17 Cup of Nations will likely have another delay before taking place after a week of chaos that saw the selections of DR Congo and tournament hosts Cameroon come under heavy scrutiny, resulting in DR Congo’s withdrawal from the competition when 25 of its 40 players failed MRI age tests. The Congolese Association Football Federation (FECOFA) announced the team’s withdrawal on Monday, leaving only four teams in the competition with Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and São Tomé and PrÃncipe electing not to send teams.
Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Chad and hosts Cameroon are the four teams remaining but Cameroon remains only after a large group of last-second replacements were called up. 32 players in Cameroon’s initial pool of players failed the MRI tests leaving the hosts scrambling to call up 30 replacements who did pass the testing. “It’s an organisational nightmare because we have to quickly come up with a new format that will involve four nations instead of the original five,” stated a UNIFFAC official to Oluwashina Okeleji of BBC Sport Africa.
Two of the four teams will qualify for the 2023 Africa U-17 Cup of Nations finals that will take place in Algeria in April. UNIFFAC was not the only qualifying region to be affected by age cheating with East Africa’s CECAFA region seeing Sudan and Djibouti withdraw while WAFU-Zone A member Liberia and COSAFA members Angola were also disqualified from qualifying due to players failing the MRI test. Morocco, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Senegal, Mali, Somalia, South Sudan, South Africa, Zambia and hosts Algeria are the teams set to take part in the finals with two more spots going to qualifiers from the UNIFFAC region.
