Morocco’s Atlas Lions set for COSAFA debut
- Peter Kanjere
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
Morocco’s Atlas Lions will make their debut in Southern Africa’s biggest football showpiece, the Council for Southern Africa Football Associations (COSAFA) Cup, scheduled for South Africa from 4 to 15 June.
COSAFA secretariat has released a statement confirming that the North Africans will grace the 14-nation competition scheduled for Magaung in Bloemfontein. The organisers have since announced that the tournament will retain last year’s format, where teams face off in group stages before going into knockouts.
The teams will be split into four pools. Groups A and B will have four teams each, and Groups C and D will have three.
For Morocco, the competition appears set to serve as preparation for the 2024 African Nations Championship (CHAN) finals set to take place in Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya in August. There was no initial qualification process for North African nations to qualify for the finals, with Morocco qualifying by virtue of other North African national teams withdrawing. Egypt and Algeria took part in the qualifying playoffs later on with Algeria qualifying.
Morocco won the 2018 and 2020 editions of the CHAN and failed to take part at the 2022 edition hosted by Algeria due to political issues between the two North African nations.
The 2022 FIFA World Cup semi-finalists Morocco will join record seven-time winners Zambia, Angola, Botswana, Comoros, Lesotho, Eswatini, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe.
Meanwhile, the draw for the competition will take place on May 21. Angola’s Palancas Negras are the defending champions of the regional competition after they beat Namibia 5-0 in last year’s edition.
