The continent’s ruling body made a landmark decision to grow the women’s game with the creation of a women’s club event
Confederation of African Football (Caf) president Ahmad Ahmad has assured the newly created Caf Women’s Champions League will kick off in 2021, stressing that at least 10 clubs will participate.
The development follows the assurance of the Caf supremo to strengthen the growth of women’s football after the launch of the four-year women’s football strategic plan last November in Egypt.
The launch of the club competition for the women’s game is generating huge excitement across the continent despite some reservations about the format to adopt, which is yet to be unveiled.
And the Malagasy football administrator insists the creation of the women’s club event was hugely necessary amidst the concerns over the lack of professional women’s football leagues in Africa.
“How we are going to start the Women’s Champions League will be handled by our technical and competition officials,” Ahmad recently told the media.
“With regards to the model, no matter what the problem could be, we must start in 2021. We know that all the competitions in Africa started with few participants and a lot of things are put in place.
“We know that there is nothing like professional league yet but that does not mean we don’t have the professionalism and that we are not going to have the women’s club competition.
“Even for men, we have a few countries that have professional leagues and we do not even have up to 10 with a professional league but Champions League for men has always taken place for ages.
“We will have 10 to 15 clubs from several countries that are going to participate and we are going to start in 2021.”
Caf also announced the cancellation of the 2020 Africa Women’s Cup of Nations on Tuesday and the news will come as a rude shock to women’s football fans, players and stakeholders in Africa.
When asked how the decision could be costly for the African teams at the 2023 Women’s World Cup, Ahmad said: “On the contrary, this is going to strengthen the preparation of our players.
“This is because they are going to have a lot of competitions. Before they were only having the Nations Cup but now they are going to have more motivation because they will have a lot of club commitments, either regional or even on the continental stage.
“The 2020 edition of the Africa Women’s Cup of Nations will surely take place with 12 teams and not eight as we had in past editions.”
Be the first to comment