CAF President thanks Sisi for organizing the AFCON

CAIRO - 20 June 2019: CAF president, Ahmad Ahmad, thanked all the Egyptian officials headed by President, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, on their efforts to organize one of the most amazing African tournaments to be.

"I thank President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi for his great effort and his great commitment to organizing the tournament at this level in just five months, I would like to commend him and the organizing committee," Ahmad told a news conference on Thursday.

The tournament will start on Friday night at Cairo stadium, it takes place with the participation of 24 teams in six groups for the first time in the history of the African competition.

"Egypt is capable of organizing the biggest tournaments, the problems have been solved recently, and the current version of the tournament is in the best form." Madgascar FA chief and CAF president said.

Egypt plays in Group A alongside the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and Zimbabwe.

"For the first time there are 19 local sponsors for the African Cup and nine international sponsors, which reflects the size of the tournament," Ahmad added.


Egypt won the rights to host the tournament after being selected over South Africa.


The 2019 African Cup of Nations was initially scheduled to be hosted by Cameroon. However, Cameroon was stripped of hosting the tournament for serious delays in preparations.

“The VAR technique will be used for the first time in the tournament and its start will be in the quarter-finals with an attempt to cancel any problems related to it in the last period.” Ahmad said.


Egypt is the most successful nation in the history of the competition as Egypt has won a record of seven titles including three in a row between 2006 and 2010.

"We invited some legends to attend, some of them apologized for different reasons. Samuel Eto'o, Didier Drogba, Mahmoud Khatib, Nwanko Kano, Haj Diouf and Rabah Majer, I thank them for accepting the invitation."