CAF African Schools Football Championship preview

The CAF African Schools Football Championship | Cosafa Qualifier for the 2024/25 season gets underway in Walvis Bay, Namibia on Friday as eight boys and girls teams from around the Southern African region battle for a single place at the continental finals.

It will be the third staging of the under-15 regional qualifiers after Lilongwe, Malawi in 2022 and Harare, Zimbabwe in 2023, both of which were won by South Africa in the boys and girls categories.

Angola, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, hosts Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe will all be represented this year.

The South African girls side went on to be crowned 2023/24 continental champions and look as though they will be the team to beat again in Walvis Bay.

The eight sides have been split into two pools, each containing four teams, with the boys’ and girls’ competition mirrored and fixtures running concurrently at the Jan Wilken Stadium.

The top two teams in each pool advance to the semifinals, and only the victor who lifts the trophy earns a place at the continental showpiece event.

There is a change to the girls competition this year as it will be 11-a-side (as opposed to 8-a-side previously) and played on a full-size pitch. In previous tournaments they played half-size.

It is a big step up from the inaugural event that was played in Malawi in October 2022. That competition had five girls’ sides and was won by South African school Edendale Technical.

There were six teams in the boys’ competition and Clapham High School from South Africa were victorious there too.

The format moved away from individual schools in 2023, but South Africa prevailed in the boys’ competition with a dramatic penalty shoot-out victory over Malawi in the decider, while the girls’ team beat Botswana 3-1 to make it another double for the country.

In this year’s continental finals in Zanzibar in May, the winners of both the boys’ and girls’ competition each received USD300 000 prize money to be utilised for development projects within schools.

The runners-up received USD200 000, while the bronze medalists took home USD150 000.

“Schools football is at the heart of the long-term development and growth of African football. One of the best investments that we can make to ensure that African football is amongst the best world, is to invest in schools’ football and football infrastructure for boys and girls at school, amateur and professional level,” CAF president Dr Patrice Motsepe has said previously.

The Motsepe Foundation has played a vital role in investing in the annual competition. – cosafa.com