2019 Africa U-17 Cup of Nations


The 2019 Africa U-17 Cup of Nations was the 13th edition of the Africa U-17 Cup of Nations, the biennial international youth football tournament organized by the Confederation of African Football for players aged 17 and below. In May 2015, it was decided that the tournament would be hosted by Tanzania.
Four teams of the tournament qualified for the 2019 FIFA U-17 World Cup in Brazil as the CAF representatives. Cameroon won their second title.
Angola and Nigeria qualified for finishing third and fourth in the competition respectively. Defending champions Mali failed to qualify.
Following completion of the tournament, CAF ejected Guinea from the competition, and deleted its results from the records, for fielding players with passports which had a different date of birth to those the players had used in the U-16 age restricted 'International Dream Cup' in Japan. Senegal were given the remaining place at the U-17 World Cup as they had placed behind Guinea during the group stage.

Qualification

The CAF decided in July 2017 that the format of the qualifying competition should be changed and split according to zones. The qualifiers were played between 19 July and 18 September 2018. At the end of the qualification phase, seven teams joined the hosts Tanzania.

Player eligibility

Players born 1 January 2002 or later were eligible to participate in the competition.

Qualified teams

The following eights teams qualified for the final tournament.
Note: All appearance statistics count only those since the introduction of final tournament in 1995.
TeamZoneAppearancePrevious best performance
Central-East Zone2nd
North Zone2nd
West A Zone2nd
West A Zone7th
West B Zone9th
Central Zone7th
Central-East Zone1st
South Zone4th

Venues

The matches were played in two venues.
CitiesVenuesCapacity
Dar es SalaamNational Stadium60,000
Mbagala, Dar es SalaamChamazi Stadium10,000

Squads

Each squad can contain a maximum of 21 players.

Draw

The draw of the final tournament was held on 20 December 2018, 19:30 EAT, at the Mlimani City Conference Centre in Dar es Salaam. The eight teams were drawn into two groups of four teams. The hosts Tanzania were seeded in Group A and allocated to position A1, while 2017 third place Guinea were seeded in Group B and allocated to position B1. The remaining six teams were seeded based on their results in the 2017 Africa U-17 Cup of Nations, and drawn to any of the remaining three positions in each group.
SeedsPot [|1]Pot 2

  • Match officials

    A total of 13 referees and 14 assistant referees were appointed for the tournament, including one women referee and two women assistant referees, which is the first time women officials were appointed in a CAF men's tournament.
    Referees
    Assistant Referees
    The top two teams of each group advance to the semi-finals and qualify for the 2019 FIFA U-17 World Cup.
    ;Tiebreakers
    Teams were ranked according to points, and if tied on points, the following tiebreaking criteria were applied, in the order given, to determine the rankings :
    1. Points in head-to-head matches among tied teams;
    2. Goal difference in head-to-head matches among tied teams;
    3. Goals scored in head-to-head matches among tied teams;
    4. If more than two teams are tied, and after applying all head-to-head criteria above, a subset of teams are still tied, all head-to-head criteria above are reapplied exclusively to this subset of teams;
    5. Goal difference in all group matches;
    6. Goals scored in all group matches;
    7. Drawing of lots.
    All times are local, EAT.

    Group A

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    Group B

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    Knockout stage

    In the knockout stage, penalty shoot-out was used to decide the winner if necessary.

    Bracket

    Semi-finals

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    Third place match

    Final

    Winners

    Awards

    The following awards were given at the conclusion of the tournament:
    Top GoalscorerMost Valuable PlayerFair Play award
    Capita Stève Mvoué

    Goalscorers

    Qualified teams for FIFA U-17 World Cup

    The following four teams from CAF qualified for the 2019 FIFA U-17 World Cup.
    TeamQualified onPrevious appearances in FIFA U-17 World Cup1
    18 4 20191
    20 4 201911
    20 4 20190
    17 5 20190

    Concerns and controversies

    CAF imposed the following penalties on the Guinean Football Federation: