Originally scheduled from 4 to 25 April 2020,[2] CAF announced its postponement on 17 March 2020 to a later date due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Africa,[3] eventually rescheduling it to January 2021 on 30 June that year.[4]
Morocco defeated Mali in the final to successfully defend their title, thus joining DR Congo as the tournament's most successful nations as well as being the first team to win it back-to-back or twice in a row.
Host selection
Ethiopia were originally officially appointed to host the tournament on 4 February 2018 after the final of the previous edition in Morocco,[5] but the country's football federation admitted it wasn't ready[6] so it was handed over to Cameroon instead.[7][8] Originally scheduled for January and February 2020,[9] it was postponed to April 2020[10] and then to January and February 2021.
After inspecting all stadia and infrastructure, CAF delivered a satisfactory certificate to Cameroon in which they indicated the percentage of attendance in line with health exigencies outlined by FIFA. Twenty five percent of spectators were admitted in the different stadia during the group stage of the competition and about 50% spectator increament the knock-out phases.[11]
The following 16 teams qualified for the final tournament:[14]
Tunisia withdrew from the tournament despite qualification. CAF invited Libya, whom Tunisia defeated to qualify, and gave them a deadline of 28 January 2020 to decide whether or not to participate in place of Tunisia.[15] Libya accepted the invitation[16] and Tunisia were fined $75,000 and banned from participating in the qualification rounds of the next edition.[17]
The draw of this edition of the tournament was held at the Polyvalent Sports Center of Yaoundé in Yaoundé on 17 February 2020 at 19:00 WAT (UTC+1).[22][23][24] The 16 teams were drawn into 4 groups of 4 and were allocated into 4 pots, with the hosts Cameroon seeded in position A1 of Group A1 and the defending champions Morocco seeded in position C1 of Group C.[25]
The top two teams of each group advance to the quarter-finals.
Tiebreakers
Teams are ranked according to points (3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw, 0 points for a loss), and if tied on points, the following tiebreaking criteria are applied, in the order given, to determine the rankings (Regulations Article 74):[19]
Goals scored in head-to-head matches among tied teams;
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;
In the knockout stages, extra time and penalty shoot-out are used to decide the winner if necessary, except for the third place match where penalty shoot-out (no extra time) is used to decide the winner if necessary (Regulations Article 75).[19]
As per statistical convention in football, matches decided in extra time are counted as wins and losses, while matches decided by penalty shoot-outs are counted as draws.
^"Decisions of CAF Executive Committee meeting – 10 September 2020". CAFOnline.com. 10 September 2020. Archived from the original on 8 March 2023. Retrieved 1 November 2020. Initially scheduled for 4-25 April 2020 and postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the final tournament of the Total African Nations Championship Cameroon 2020 will now take place on 16 January to 7 February 2021.
.png)
Morocco (2nd title)
Mali
Guinea
Cameroon
.jpg)
