Sports
AFCON to Hold Every Four Years from 2028 as CAF Launches Nations League
By Adedapo Adesanya
The Confederation of African Football (CAF) has announced that the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) would be held every four years from 2028.
CAF President, Mr Patrice Motsepe, disclosed that the tournament, which has taken place every two years since 1968, with a one-year gap between the 2012 and 2013 editions, will switch to a four-year cycle after the 2027 AFCON in East Africa.
Mr Motsepe also announced the creation of an African Nations League which will take place annually from 2029.
“We have the most exciting new structure for African football,” Mr Motsepe said.
“I do what is in the interests of Africa. The global calendar has to be significantly more synchronised and harmonised.”
Also, CAF has increased the prize money for the winners of Afcon from $7 million to $10 million.
These decisions came from resolutions made after a meeting of CAF’s executive committee in Morocco before the start of the 2025 edition of the tournament scheduled to start in Rabat on Sunday.
The biennial hosting of AFCON has long caused issues with the football calendar, with the vast majority of recent tournaments held midway through the European club season. However, CAF remained committed to scheduling the tournament every two years.
CAF had made a resolution for AFCON to be held in a June-July slot from 2019 onwards and began its new plan in Egypt that year.
However, the COVID-19 pandemic and weather conditions in host nations in Central and West Africa meant the 2021 and 2023 editions in Cameroon and Ivory Coast respectively were staged in January and February instead.
FIFA’S expanded 32-team Club World Cup was held in June and July this year, forcing CAF to opt for mid-season dates once again.
As a result this year’s AFCON in Morocco will take place over Christmas and the New Year for the first time, with the final on January 18.
The dates for the 2027 edition in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda are yet to be announced, and that will be swiftly followed by another tournament in 2028 – with the hosts of that edition yet to be decided.
After that, the continent’s biggest tournament will become a quadrennial tournament taking place in the same year as the European Championships.
Mr Motsepe said the decision had been made in conjunction with FIFA president Gianni Infantino and the world governing body’s general secretary Mattias Grafstrom – and that Caf “have to compromise”.
The CAF President said the African Nations League will take place in September, October, and November every year from 2029.
The competition will see all 54 member associates split into four zones, with six nations in the Northern zone and 16 nations in the Eastern, Western and Central and Southern zones.
Matches will be played in September and October, with the champions from each region meeting in November to then decide an overall winner.
Mr Motsepe said the new competition will be “the equivalent of an Afcon every year” and will be held in partnership with Fifa in order to attract top-class sponsors.
“Every year in Africa, the best African players who play in Europe will be with us on the continent,” Motsepe added.
“Every year we will have a competition with 54 African nations with all the best players coming here to play.
“We are going to have a world-class competition every year.”
By Dipo Olowookere
A fully synthetic multilingual Artificial Intelligence (AI) presenter known as AILA has been unveiled by Flashscore, one of the world’s largest digital sports data and news platforms.
Flashscore, which boasts more than 155 million monthly users, said the AI presenter was developed in collaboration with a creative high-value AI production studio, Fameplay.
AILA turns Flashscore’s sports data-driven features and narratives into localised presenter-led video, a statement from the company made available to Business Post said.
It anchored Route 48, Flashscore’s player-by-player data profile series, in Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese, and fronted an app-download campaign across Latin America, Spain and France, speaking each market’s language natively.
On the strength of that run, Flashscore is now ready to extend AILA across product and editorial announcements, original shows and partnerships.
Flashscore noted that AILA does not replace human editorial teams or studios, but rather complements them effectively and adds an always-available element.
“AILA was created by deliberately separating two distinct elements. The performance itself, the movement, facial expressions, and on-screen presence, was licensed from a real actress. The face, however, was built entirely from scratch: fully synthetic and fully owned,” the Chief AI Producer and co-founder of Fameplay, Lukáš Záhoř, stated.
“AILA can speak in dozens of languages, across any format, at any time, without being constrained by the availability or limitations of a human performer.
“Most synthetic presenters, by contrast, borrow a real person’s face and simply hope no one asks who actually owns it. For Flashscore, we created an asset that will only become more valuable over time, not a deepfake that lasts only until the first lawsuit,” Záhoř added.
Also commenting, the Chief Digital Content Officer at Livesport, Alan Záruba, said, “Our newsroom reaches millions of people, and we built our own studios to enhance our content the way we want it.
“AILA is an extension of that, not a departure from it. We want to stay at the forefront of the current digital development and AI-powered stream. When we briefed Fameplay on how to handle the concept of an AI digital avatar which can radically change the way we would scale our content, we wrote a single line to define future AILA: she’s built from numbers, but she speaks in stories.”
By Adedapo Adesanya
Nigeria’s Super Falcons have failed to qualify for the 2027 FIFA Women’s World Cup after suffering a 2-1 defeat to South Africa in their play-off encounter on Thursday night.
The Nigerian team, reeling from a 1-0 loss to Cameroon in the quarter-finals of the CAF Women’s African Cup of Nations (WAFCON) on Sunday, showed no signs of putting their misery to bed as they went two goals down to the Bayana Bayana team. It took a late penalty scored by Christy Uchebe to halve the deficit after the South Africans went down to 10 players.
The Super Falcons needed a victory against their opponents to progress to the next stage of the qualification process and secure one of the two available tickets to the intercontinental play-offs. The defeat ended their hopes of making it to the 2027 tournament, which will be hosted by Brazil.
The result brings an end to Nigeria’s remarkable record of appearing at every edition of the Women’s World Cup since the tournament was first held in 1991.
The play-offs were introduced to determine the final African representatives after four teams were eliminated at the quarter-final stage of the 2026 Women’s Africa Cup of Nations.
Two qualification tickets were available, with Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire battling for the opportunity to advance.
Ghana secured one of the available tickets after defeating Côte d’Ivoire 2-1, while South Africa claimed the other following their victory over the Super Falcons.
The Super Falcons had featured in all previous editions of the tournament, making their absence from the 2027 World Cup a significant moment in the history of Nigerian women’s football.
It also raises fresh questions about the direction of Nigerian national football after the Super Eagles also failed to qualify for the recently concluded FIFA World Cup held in the USA, Canada, and Mexico.
European football returns with a bang as the new season kicks off. The dust has barely settled on the 2026 FIFA World Cup, but European football wastes no time getting back to business. Over the next two weeks, the continent’s prominent competitions will launch in quick succession, giving fans a dense run of fixtures across the UEFA Super Cup, the FA Community Shield, La Liga, the Premier League and Serie A.
Paris Saint-Germain, fresh off back-to-back Champions League triumphs, faces Aston Villa in the UEFA Super Cup on Wednesday 12 August at 8pm which will be airing on Supersport across DStv & GOtv, with the French side chasing a second successive Super Cup crown against an Aston Villa team that has become an increasingly serious force in European competition.
England’s traditional curtain-raiser follows four days later. The FA Community Shield, staged in Cardiff on Sunday 16 August at 3pm, pits Premier League champions Arsenal against FA Cup holders Manchester City, the latter beginning life under new manager Enzo Maresca, while Arsenal look to reinforce their status as the team to beat.
Spain gets moving over the same weekend, with La Liga’s opening round running from Saturday 15 to Monday 17 August. Real Madrid, Barcelona and Atletico Madrid have all been given extended rest following Spain’s World Cup win, leaving the door open for the chasing pack to set an early pace before Matchday 2 arrives from 20 to 24 August.
The Premier League then starts the following weekend, running from Friday 21 to Monday 24 August. Champions Arsenal open their title defence at home to promoted Coventry, before a full round of fixtures featuring Manchester United, Tottenham, Manchester City, Liverpool and Chelsea, among others, round out the opening weekend. Serie A joins the calendar on the same weekend, from 22 to 24 August, with holders Inter Milan starting their title defence against Monza and Napoli, Juventus, Milan and Roma all in early action.
With five major competitions launching inside a fortnight, the new European season promises an unrelenting start. All the action will be available live on SuperSport, across DStv and GOtv.
