2018 African Nations Championship


The 2018 African Nations Championship, known as the Total African Nations Championship was the 5th edition of the African Nations Championship, a biennial football tournament organized by the Confederation of African Football exclusively featuring players from the respective national championships. It took place between 12 January and 4 February 2018. In February 2016, Kenya was announced as the host nation but in September 2017, CAF decided to change the host nation due to a lack of progress with preparations. Morocco was announced as the host nation in October 2017.
Unlike the African Cup of Nations, the competing national teams must be composed of players playing in their domestic league. For example, a Moroccan player is only eligible to play for the Morocco national team if he is playing for a Moroccan club.
Hosts Morocco defeated Nigeria in the final to win their first title. DR Congo were the defending champions but failed to qualify for the first time ever after losing to Congo on away goals rule.

Host selection

Initially, Kenya was announced as the host nation in February 2016. But in September 2017, CAF decided to change the host nation due to a lack of progress with preparations.
The CAF received three bids by the deadline of 30 September 2017 to replace Kenya as new hosts:
The Ethiopian Football Federation did not provide the government's letter of guarantee, and were not considered. The CAF Emergency Committee decided to choose Morocco over Equatorial Guinea in October 2017.

Qualification

The qualifying rounds took place from April to August 2017.
Since Morocco had already qualified in the North Zone before being named as replacement hosts, their spot in the final tournament was re-allocated to Egypt, which lost to Morocco in the North Zone final qualifying round. However, Egypt declined to participate citing a "congested domestic calendar". As a result, the spot was reverted to Central-East Zone, and would go to the winner of a play-off in November 2017 between Ethiopia and Rwanda, the two teams which lost in the Central-East Zone final qualifying round.

Qualified teams

The following 16 teams qualified for the final tournament.
TeamZoneAppearancePrevious best performanceFIFA ranking
at start of event
Central Zone3rd 45
Central Zone2nd 96
Central Zone1st146
Central-East Zone3rd 113
Central-East Zone2nd 136
Central-East Zone4th 75
North Zone3rd 88
North Zone3rd 40
South Zone3rd 141
South Zone1st118
South Zone3rd 74
West A Zone2nd 65
West A Zone2nd 99
West B Zone2nd 44
West B Zone4th 61
West B Zone3rd 51

Venues

Matches were held in Casablanca, Marrakech, Agadir and Tangier.

Casablanca
Marrakesh
Stade Mohamed V
Stade de Marrakech
Capacity: 45,600
Capacity: 45,240

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Tangier
Agadir
Stade Ibn Batouta
Stade Adrar
Capacity: 45,000
Capacity: 45,480

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Before their hosting rights were withdrawn, Football Kenya Federation planned to use four stadiums as competition venues. However, only Nyayo National Stadium in Nairobi and Kasarani Stadium in Kasarani were considered to meet hosting requirements after CAF inspection, while Mombasa Municipal Stadium in Mombasa and Kinoru Stadium in Meru did not.

Squads

Each squad can contain a maximum of 23 players. The finalized squads were announced by the CAF on 10 January 2018. Players must play for clubs in their home country.

Match officials

A total of 32 match officials were selected for the tournament. In addition, seven match official were selected to operate the video assistant referee system starting from the quarter-finals, a first in African competitions.

Draw

The draw of the final tournament was held on 17 November 2017, 19:30 WET, at Sofitel Rabat in Rabat, Morocco.
The 16 teams were drawn into four groups of four teams. The hosts Morocco were seeded in Group A. The remaining teams were seeded based on their results in the four most recent final tournaments: 2009, 2011, 2014, 2016 :
Based on the formula above, the four pots were allocated as follows:
Pot 1Pot 2Pot 3Pot 4

Group stage

The top two teams of each group advance to the quarter-finals.
;Tiebreakers
Teams are ranked according to points, and if tied on points, the following tiebreaking criteria are 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, WET.

Group A

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Group B

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Group C

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Group D

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Knockout stage

In the knockout stage, extra time and penalty shoot-out are used to decide the winner if necessary, except for the third place match where penalty shoot-out is used to decide the winner if necessary.

Bracket

Quarter-finals

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Semi-finals

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Third place match

Final

Goalscorers

;9 goals
;3 goals
;2 goals
;1 goal
The following awards were given at the conclusion of the tournament:

Tournament team rankings