The CAF African Schools Football Championship COSAFA Qualifiers, Zimbabwe 2023 gets underway at Gateway High School in Harare on Thursday, 14 December, where young boys and girls in the Under-15 age-group will compete to be crowned champions of the region.
The COSAFA Zone takes centre stage after CAF recently concluded successful editions in the WAFU B (Togo) and CECAFA (Kenya) Zones recently.
The youth football action now swiftly moves to Harare this week as the race towards a place at next year’s Continental Finals takes shape.
Leading up to the start of the competition, CAF in close partnership with COSAFA continued rolling out its various capacity building programmes as part of the competition’s key objective of producing future African leaders.
Ahead of Thursday’s start to the competition, the CAF Young Referees Programme and Coaches Programme were officially conducted for aspiring referees and coaches.
Taking a look at the football action, hosts Zimbabwe will take on Malawi and Botswana clash with Eswatini in the Group A openers in the Boys’ division, while the same nations clash in the Girls’ section. That theme or mirrored fixtures is carried on throughout the pool phase.
South Africa and Angola open their bid for glory in the Boys’ and Girls’ competitions with a Group B clash at 10h00, while Zambia and Namibia do likewise on another pitch at the same time.
There will be a total of 20 fixtures played on the opening day, with 20 more scheduled for Friday, when the group phase will come to a close.
The winners of each of the two pools in both the Boys’ and Girls’ competitions will then face each other in a final to decide the winner who advances to the continental finals in April next year.
The Girls’ decider will be on Saturday at 10h00, with the Boys’ at 12h00. Before then, the runners’ up in each pool will contest for the bronze medal. The Girls’ playoff game is at 09h00 and the Boys’ at 11h00.
The Boys’ competition will be played on full size pitches with 11-a-side, while the Girls’ tournament is played on half-sized pitches and is 8-a-side. In both competitions it will be 20 minutes per half, with a 10-minute halftime break
