The European Club Association (ECA) has threatened not to release players for the African Cup of Nations (CAN), scheduled for January 9 to February 6, 2022 in Cameroon, fearing the sanitary protocol amid the covid pandemic, according to an email to which the AFP had access this Wednesday.
“As far as we know, the African Football Confederation has not yet released an adapted medical and operational protocol for the CAN tournament, without which clubs will not be able to release their players for the tournament,” says the e-mail, intended for FIFA
The ECA also points to the risk of a player’s absence for longer than expected due to “quarantines and movement restrictions” linked, above all, to the emergence of the omicron variant of the coronavirus.
According to the relaxed rules for the release of athletes from national teams, confirmed several times by FIFA since August 2020, clubs can retain their players if “a quarantine of at least five days is required from arrival” to the place “where the player’s selection match must be played, or at the club’s venue after his return.”
ECA’s Board of Directors recently reaffirmed that these principles must be “strictly adhered to”. CAN’s e-mail is addressed to Mattias Grafström, FIFA Deputy Secretary General.
“Otherwise, players should not be released to their national team”, assesses ECA.
Questioned by AFP, the African Football Confederation (CAF) declined to comment and quoted the statement published on Wednesday, in which Veron Mosengo-Omba, CAF secretary general, asked the Cameroon Organizing Committee to “work day and night to ensure that everything be ready for the opening game on January 9, 2022”.
The sending of this e-mail from ECA to FIFA comes at a time when rumors are intensifying about a possible cancellation of the Africa Cup, a tournament initially scheduled for 2021, but postponed a year due to the pandemic.
A top official at the Cameroon Football Federation (Fecafoot), questioned by the AFP, described these speculations as “false news”.
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