TheConfederation of African Football[a] (CAF) is the administrative and controlling body forassociation football,beach soccer, andfutsal inAfrica. It was established on 8 February 1957 at theGrand Hotel inKhartoum, Sudan. At the FIFA Congress in 1954 held inBern, Switzerland, it was voted to recognise Africa as a Confederation.[2][3][4]
The main headquarters of CAF was first situated within the offices of the Sudanese Football Association in Khartoum until it experienced a fire outbreak and then moved to a town nearCairo, Egypt until 2002. Youssef Mohamad was the first general secretary andAbdel Aziz Abdallah Salem,the first president. PresidentPatrice Motsepe fromSouth Africa was elected on 12 March 2021 in an unopposed elections held inRabat, Morocco.[5][6]
CAF launched a competition for all African composers to create itsanthem without lyrics to reflect the cultural patrimony and themusic of Africa on 18 September 2007.[7]
Some African states withlimited or no international recognition have official national teams, but none have been considered for CAF membership. Instead, they are affiliated with organisations such asCONIFA.
Shortly after formation, CAF organised theAfrica Cup of Nations (abbreviated AFCON) in 1957 and it has since become its flagship competition. Faced with undisclosed decline in popularity of local competitions and the mass exodus of homegrown footballers to Europe, Asia and the Americas in the 1990s and early 2000s, CAF launched theAfrican Nations Championship (alternatively, though not widely used, the Championship of African Nations (CHAN)) on 11 September 2007 and began organisation two years later, to address this issue. CAF also organises qualification tournaments/competitions for theFIFA U-20 World Cup and theFIFA U-17 World Cup for its member associations; both of which initially began on a home-and-awaytwo-legged basis but has since 1995 been organised in appointed host countries as respectively theUnder-20 andU-17 Africa Cup of Nations.
Forwomen's football operates competitions which currently serve as qualification tournaments for the related FIFA-organised tournaments which launched at the exact same year they began formation. The flagship African women's football competition/tournament is theWomen's Africa Cup of Nations, which launched in 1991 as theAfrican Women's Championship and was known in the mass media between 2015 and 2021 as theAfrica/African Women/Women's Cup of Nations, which currently qualifies 4 teams to theFIFA Women's World Cup. CAF also organises qualification matches for "promising future female footballers" at both theUnder-20 andUnder-17 levels, launched in 2002 and 2008 respectively, both of which crowns no champions but instead qualifies 2 teams to compete at theFIFA U-20 Women's World Cup and theFIFA U-17 Women's World Cup respectively.
For African clubs, CAF runs theCAF Men's andWomen's Champions League, theCAF Confederation Cup, theCAF Super Cup and the African Schools Football Championship for both males and females. First held in 1964 as theAfrican Cup of Champions Clubs (simply known sometimes as theAfrican Cup) and rebranded in 1997 as the CAF Champions League, this football club competition currently features the champions of top-division leagues of CAF member associations and the runners-up teams of the league classifications of member associations the top 12 ranked national associations as documented by theCAF 5-year ranking system.
A currently-former competition, theAfrican Cup Winners' Cup, commenced in 1975 for national cup winners of member associations and a third currently-former competition, theCAF Cup, launched in 1992 for African teams who finished below the top 2 positions of the league classifications of member associations and haven't met any criteria for qualification to any CAF competition. CAF decided to merge these two competitions together to form the current second-tier CAF Confederation Cup in 2004, and it currently incorporates the participation of national cup winners from the Cup Winners' Cup, whiles maintaining the format of the participation of teams who finished 3rd in the top-division league classifications of the 12 highest-ranked member associations as documented by the CAF 5-Year Ranking system from the CAF Cup. It is also ranked below the CAF Champions League.[12]
The winners of the CAF Champions League play the winners of the African Cup Winners' Cup until 2004 and the CAF Confederation Cup thereafter in theCAF Super Cup which was launched in 1993.
The CAF Women's Champions League was announced and approved on 30 June 2020, launched on 12 September that year and began contesting the following year, i.e. 2021.[13][14] It features women's national league and cup winners nvolving the champions of CAF's sub-confederation qualification tournaments for women's club teams.
In October 2004, South African telecommunications giant,MTN, contracted a 4-year deal to sponsor CAF competitions worth US$12.5 million, which was the biggest sponsorship deal in African sporting history at that time.[15]
CAF opened new sponsorship callouts when MTN's contract expired and French telecommunications giantOrange scooped it up in July 2009, signing an 8-year comprehensive long-term undisclosed deal to sponsor CAF competitions with a value of €100 million.[16]
On 21 July 2016, French energy and petroleum giant, Total S.A., replaced Orange as the main sponsor with an 8-year sponsorship package from CAF for a value of €950 million[17] to support its competitions.[18] Total rebranded asTotalEnergies on 28 May 2021.[19]
The following table lists all the countries whose clubs have won at least one CAF competition. Egyptian clubs are the most successful, with a total of 44 titles. Egyptian clubs hold a record number of wins inthe African Cup of Champions Clubs/CAF Champions League (19), the now-defunctAfrican Cup Winners' Cup (8), theCAF Super Cup (12) and the now-defunctAfro-Asian Club Championship (3), followed by Tunisian clubs with 24 titles and they have the most victories in the now-defunctCAF Cup (4) and Moroccan clubs have secured also 24 titles with the most victories in theCAF Confederation Cup (7).
Rankings are calculated by the CAF based on points gathered by African teams throughout their participation in international club tournaments organised by either CAF themselves orFIFA since the establishment of the firstAfrican Cup of Champions Clubs in 1964.[23]
QF – Quarter-finals (1934–1938, 1954–1970, and 1986–present: knockout round of 8)
R3 — Round 3 (2026–present: knockout round of 16)
R2 — Round 2 (1974–1978: second group stage, top 8; 1982: second group stage, top 12; 1986–2022: knockout round of 16; 2026–present: knockout round of 32)
R1 — Round 1 (1930, 1950–1970 and 1986–present: group stage; 1934–1938: knockout round of 16; 1974–1982: first group stage)
Q — Qualified for upcoming tournament
•• – Qualified but withdrew
• – Did not qualify
× – Did not enter / Withdrew / Banned
– Hosts
– Not affiliated in FIFA
For each tournament, the flag of the host country and the number of teams in each finals tournament (in brackets) are shown.
The voting to select the best of the century refers to three categories: male player, goalkeeper and female player and is obtained from five different steps. The resulting best players and goalkeepers were honoured during the "World Football Gala 1999".[26]
In 2007, CAF published the list of top 30 African players who played in the period from 1957 to 2007, as part of the celebration of the golden jubilee or 50th anniversary of the foundation of CAF, ordered according to an online poll.[27]
^French:Confédération Africaine de Football;Arabic:الاتحاد الإفريقي لكرة القدم,romanised: al-Ittiḥād al-Ifrīqī li-Kurat al-Qadam;Portuguese:Confederação Africana de Futebol;Spanish:Confederación Africana de Fútbol;Swahili:Shirikisho la Soka Afrika.
^Member ofUNAF. Withdrew on 19 November 2009 and rejoined in 2011.
^abAssociate member, not part ofFIFA. Zanzibar held full membership for four months in 2017, when its status was changed after CAF admitted its membership was an error.[11]
^This tournament was initially formed as a home-and-away qualification tournament for U-21 African nations in 1977. Since 1979, a proper tournament was launched as theAfrican Youth Championship and used these branded titles until 2015:African U-21 Cup of Nations until 1989,African U-21 Championship until 2003 andAfrican U-20 Championship until 2015. The current name was adopted in 2017.
^From 1995 to 2015, the tournament was known as theAfrican U-17 Championship. The current name was adopted in 2017.
^Egypt team represented theUnited Arab Republic with Syria in 1960 finishing the 12th and alone in 1964 finishing the 4th.
^Costa Rica and Panama were originally due to host the2020 FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup, but the latter withdrew citingthe COVID-19 pandemic and left Costa Rica as the sole hosts. FIFA postponed the 2020 edition to the following year, i.e. 2021, pending improvement in pandemic management, but cancelled it altogether on 17 November 2020 due to the escalation of the pandemic caused by the discovery ofthe COVID-19 Omicron variant a month earlier and automatically awarded them the 2022 edition.
^Original hosts Peru were stripped of the rights to host the 2019 edition in February that year.[25]
^Peru was originally due to host the2021 FIFA U-17 World Cup but FIFA cancelled it on 24 December 2020 citing theCOVID-19 pandemic and its escalation of the pandemic caused by the discovery ofthe COVID-19 Omicron variant a month earlier as the reasons and automatically awarded them the 2023 edition. Peru later withrew as hosts on 2 May 2023 due to infrastructural defects and FIFA awarded the hosting eights to Indonesia, whom FIFA earlier stripped the hosting rights for the year's FIFA U-20 World Cup.
^India were originally due to host the2020 FIFA U-17 Women's World Cup, but it was postponed to the following year, i.e. 2021, due to theCOVID-19 pandemic by FIFA, who eventually cancelled it on 17 November 2020 and rather automatically awarded them the 2022 edition.
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