THE Confederation of African Football has moved the third-place playoff of the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations by a day.
The bronze medal decider had been scheduled for Yaounde on Sunday, but it has now been brought forward to Saturday in the same city, the Cameroonian capital.
The match will now be played on Saturday at 8 pm instead of the original schedule, which would have had its start just three hours before the final on Sunday.
Both matches will be played in Yaounde, with the new Olembe Stadium hosting the final and the Ahmadou Ahidjo Stadium the venue for the third-place game.CAF is apparently worried after the crush that killed eight people at Olembe Stadium during Cameroon’s round of 16 encounter with Comoros last week.
“The CAF TotalEnergies Africa Cup of Nations Organising Committee, after discussions with the Government of Cameroon and the Local Organising Committee (LOC), decided to move the TotalEnergies Africa Cup of Nations Cameroon 2021 third and fourth place originally scheduled for Sunday 06 February 2022 to Saturday, 05 February 2022,” CAF said in an official statement.
Apart from security and safety concerns, CAF would have had logistics issues too if the third-place playoff and final were played so close to each other.
CAF officials would not have been able to distribute medals to the third-place team and make it to the final on time, with the distance between the two Yaounde stadiums 12 kilometres.
Burkina Faso will face the losers of the heavyweight semi-final clash between Cameroon and Egypt in the third-place match on Saturday.
Senegal, who beat Burkina Faso 3-1 in the first semi-final on Wednesday night, await the winners of the second semi-final.
The match between Cameroon and Egypt on Thursday night will be the first to be held at the Olembe Stadium since the 24 January tragedy that took eight lives and left 38 injured.
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