African Sports Monthly January 2013 Issue | Page 16

The AFCON 2013 Qualifiers
Mikel Obi celebrates

Just after the Equatorial Guinea/Gabon showpiece other actions commenced as the
battle for the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations kicked-off and one would wonder why they
the Confederation would schedule a back to back cup of nations and this was because the African governing body, CAF decided with some influence from FIFA to host
the tournament every odd year to avoid overload on the players during the FIFA World
cup years.
The 2013 tournament finals were scheduled to have been staged in Libya but because of the political unrest, South Africa stepped in and struck a deal to swap the
hosting rights.
Unlike the qualifiers to the 2012 tournament, the South Africa 2013 took a different dimension with CAF giving a bye to some nations as the qualifying matches where
played on a knockout basis without any group action due to the short time span between the 2012 finals and 2013 competition with the host South Africa automatically
qualifying as the host.
The first qualifying round saw 28 Nations battle for 14 spots to make it into the next
round and the 14 winners were joined by 16 finalists from the 2012 African Nations
Cup finals of which 15 winners qualified for the finals in South Africa.

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