WAFCON 2024: a beautiful mess

A year late and challenges galore, but the WAFCON is still thriving

Three years ago, I attended the best atmosphere I have ever seen in my life. Flares, booing, whistling and 60,000 Moroccans baying for blood. The Stade Moulay Abdellah in Rabat was rocking!

It wasn’t the CAF Champions League, with Wydad Casablanca fans challenging to be the best in Africa, wasn’t even the Atlas Lions playing in an AFCON qualifier. It was the Moroccan women’s national team in the semi finals of the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations (WAFCON).

That game was legendary. The Atlas Lionesses were playing African champions Nigeria. The Super Falcons suffered two red cards in 90 minutes but held on to draw 1-1 and even nearly won in extra time. But the Moroccans won on penalties in the biggest match in the country’s history.

A few days later, the Moroccans suffered the same agony, losing out to South Africa who won their first ever continental title, breaking Nigeria’s dominance on the tournament.

Three years on and we’re back in Morocco for a tournament that promises to be maybe not bigger, but certainly better.

Tournament a year in waiting

For the eagle-eyed readers among you, you’ll notice that this is WAFCON 2024. Don’t worry, it wasn’t a typo. The tournament was indeed meant to take place last year but because of completely unforeseen scheduling conflicts (namely the Olympics), the tournament was nearly cancelled entirely but now is taking place just 12 months late.

When CAF awarded the 2022 WAFCON to Morocco they decided to follow the path of the men’s tournament and move the tournament from its normal slot in November/December to the European summer. Potentially unforeseen to CAF though, unlike the men’s game, the Olympics is a full-blown tournament in women’s football.

Because the Olympics is a scheduled FIFA event and has been in the FIFA calendar since the Olympics was scheduled, if CAF had hosted the WAFCON in the summer ahead of the Olympics (which there was time for), they couldn’t compel clubs with players from Nigeria and Zambia who had qualified for the Olympics to play at the WAFCON. This is because FIFA only allows for one major tournament per year where clubs are required to release players.

Instead of risking playing its premiere tournament without full strength squads from two of the favourites, CAF postponed the tournament. Well, they postponed the tournament without telling anyone, fuelling speculation that the competition would be scrapped entirely like the 2020 edition was.

Thankfully for the WAFCON, the men’s AFCON was also postponed from its original slot this summer so here we are.

Often federations and confederations complain that they can’t prioritise women’s football because it’s not as profitable as men’s football. Putting aside any moral notions of state backed entities failing meet laws around equal pay, if you were a corporation curious about sponsoring this tournament or one of the teams involved, there is so little to be gained because of the organisation.

The men’s AFCON entire fixture list and list of venues was released in January this year, nearly a full 12 months before the tournament kicks off. On the other hand, we didn’t even know the cities that would host games, let alone the schedule until just five weeks ahead of the tournament.

How can you plan to promote this tournament with that kind of run up time? As a journalist covering the tournament, when I booked my flights to Morocco, I had to do so in the full knowledge that the tournament may be cancelled and instead I would spend a two-week holiday in Morocco.

The tournament has been delayed so much that the qualifiers for the 2026 WAFCON have already started, and Tunisia have already been knocked out of the tournament, before they play in this year’s edition.

At the moment, the WAFCON and CAF have been handed a lifeline by Morocco who have agreed to host the last edition of the tournament, this one and the next one in a year’s time. With no official bidding process, we have no idea whether other nations did bid for any of the three competitions, but all reports point to that number being zero.

But it is a double edged sword because Morocco holds all the cards. From hotels, to training facilities to stadiums, CAF is in a position where they can’t turn down any suggestions from Morocco. On her Instagram, Nigeria’s captain Rasheedat Ajibade posted a picture of her room in the official Nigeria hotel, complaining about the cramped space she’ll be staying in for the next four weeks. Ajibade tagged CAF in her post but she might as well tag the King of Morocco, he’ll have more of a chance of helping her out than CAF’s president Patrice Motsepe.

When Morocco is renovating the three stadiums that hosted the 2022 WAFCON it’s understandable that this tournament will be hosted elsewhere.

What is perhaps surprising is that instead of using the now renovated Stade Mohamed V in Casablanca (Wydad played a pre-Club World Cup friendly there) or any of the country’s other four stadiums that are ready and will be used for the AFCON, instead the WAFCON is being hosted in smaller, municipal stadiums in Casablanca, Rabat, Mohammedia as well as in Berkane and Oujda, 600 kilometres away on the Algerian border.

The only stadium being used this month that will also host games in December is the newly built Olympic Stadium in Rabat. The 21,000 thousand seater stadium is literally in the shadow of the Stade Moulay Abdellah stadium is good enough to host all of the Atlas Lionesses’ games. But for the men’s AFCON it will be the host to games as prestigious as Benin vs Botswana and Tunisia vs Uganda.

Let me be clear, I’m not saying the WAFCON should be using the same size stadiums as the AFCON, but the Atlas Lionesses can sell out the biggest stadiums in Morocco, so it does feel a bit strange to not see them being given that chance this summer.

Women’s football in Africa has never been bigger. We have never seen a player as good as Barbra Banda grace the continent, even fringe countries like Tanzania are professionalising and producing talent like Clara Luvanga who at just 20, already commands a price tag of $500,000.

The “big four” of African football all overperformed at the World Cup, three of them getting out of the group stage (a feat the men have never done) at the expense of nations like Canada, Germany and Italy. Stay tuned for my team-by-team preview.

We know this will be a brilliant WAFCON because of the players, teams and coaches involved. It’s just a shame that it isn’t being given the platform it deserves.