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TWENTY-EIGHT players will be eligible to be selected in the final Warriors squad for next month’s African Cup of Nations finals in Cameroon.
This is after the Confederation of African Football (Caf) permitted the participating teams to include five more players in their final selections for the tournament due to the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The 28 players will be picked from the 40-man list submitted to Caf last month.
Caf also confirmed that the number of substitutes wouldn’t change with one additional change permitted should the game go into extra time.
Meanwhile, Zifa have requested a special consideration in registering the final squad.
The association wants a waiver so that the Warriors technical team can be allowed to add some new players that were initially not part of the provisional squad.
The request is based on the issue of how the coronavirus pandemic has affected the local league. The Warriors are in Group B and will face fellow Cosafa team Malawi, Guinea and Senegal. The national team will be making their fifth appearance at the finals.
The tournament will run from January 9 to February 6 2022.
And former Warriors and Dynamos midfielder, Justice Majabvi, believes the national team can do well at the upcoming Afcon finals, if they are focused and determined.
Norman Mapeza’s charges will step on Cameroonian soil for the 33rd edition of the biannual show-piece in which they are in Group B, alongside Senegal, Malawi and Guinea.
Progression to the group stages of the tournament has evaded the Warriors since their maiden appearance in Tunisia in 2004, but Majabvi believes all that can change, if the team is focused on the challenge.
The Warriors are heading into Afcon on the back of a very disappointing World Cup qualifying campaign in which they finished bottom of Group G with only two points and Majabvi insists that was a missed opportunity to book a place at the global show-piece for the first time. — Soccer24
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