Speaking on RMC’s After Foot, Congo-Brazzaville head coach Claude Le Roy claims that CAF president Patrice Motsepe is considering reviving the CHAN, which was scrapped in January.
The CHAN may yet rise from the grave. Speaking on RMC’s After Foot, Claude Le Roy claimed that Patrice Motsepe, president of the Confederation of African Football (CAF), is seriously considering reviving the African Nations Championship, which was scrapped last January, according to Afrik-Foot.
The French coach, now in charge of the Congo national team, says he held a direct and in-depth discussion on the subject with the South African official. CAF, for its part, has not yet announced an official date for a formal vote on reinstatement by its executive committee: the announcement therefore remains a revelation attributed to Le Roy alone.
An indispensable “laboratory”
Reserved exclusively for players plying their trade in their respective domestic leagues, the CHAN was scrapped in January. A decision that the former Senegal, Cameroon and DR Congo coach strongly contests, taking aim at the purely commercial arguments put forward to justify the tournament’s removal.
“There is a discussion that will get under way to bring it back, because today it is the only research laboratory for the countries, let’s say, of the second tier in Africa, to go into the provinces and villages and discover local talent. Its removal was a catastrophe,” the Frenchman said on RMC, according to Afrik-Foot.
Le Roy does not stop there and lambasts the financial motives behind the removal: “Supposedly because it didn’t bring in any money. As if there always had to be…” For him, the CHAN remains the only springboard and laboratory for spotting talent in Africa’s provinces and villages.
Another CAF U-turn?
The announcement comes as the continental body recently performed another U-turn by reopening the door to an AFCON staged every two years. A reversal which, if confirmed for the CHAN, would point the same way: a backtracking on recent decisions.
Claude Le Roy is one of the most experienced coaches on the continent, with a career that has taken him notably to Senegal, Cameroon and DR Congo. Now at the helm of the Congo national team, he is the source of this revelation about CAF’s intentions.
Yet nothing is official. According to Afrik-Foot, CAF has not yet announced an official date for the formal vote on reinstatement by its executive committee. Le Roy’s announcement should be treated as conditional until the body has taken a public stance.
Towards a return to the calendar
Official discussions within CAF’s Executive Committee on reinstating the tournament in the continental calendar are expected. Any eventual decision should therefore come from that body, and not from the announcement made on RMC.
In the meantime, the debate over the place of domestic leagues in the development of African football has been reignited. For now, the CHAN remains scrapped: its reinstatement is merely under consideration, with no official timetable at this stage.