A deadline has been fixed for the submission of participating teams’ final squad lists for the African Nations Cup in South Africa, next year. This deadline was fixed by CAF which said that the final 23-man squad must be submitted to the organisation’s headquarters in Cairo by midnight GMT of January 9.
All 16 finalists are entitled to have a 23-man squad and a delegation of a further 17 officials. It further warned that any list sent late will leave CAF with no option but to fine the countries that default and a player subtracted from their list.
It would be recalled that in 1998, South Africa was penalized when it delayed sending its list to CAF and were thus, only allowed to participate with 22 players – a move which forced SAFA to leave striker Pollen Ndlanya out of the squad as a result of an embarrassing administrative lapse. CAF has long scrapped a rule which demanded preliminary squad lists from participating countries.
