The Africa Cup of Nations returns next year and will take several Premier League players away from league duty.
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Tottenham Hotspur, Chelsea and West Ham could all see key first team stars miss 10 fixtures of the 2025/26 campaign as a result of a controversial FIFA decision.
As worked out by the Liverpool Echo, with the Reds monitoring the availability of star man Mohamed Salah, the Africa Cup of Nations is set to take place in the middle of next season. The competition was pushed back from the summer of 2025 to allow the inaugural edition of FIFA’s expanded Club World Cup.
That event is taking place in the United States in June and July with Chelsea and Manchester City the two clubs set to represent the Premier League. The AFCON programming has also been impacted by the addition of two extra Champions League match days at the end of January.
AFCON pushed back for Club World Cup
AFCON is set to start on December 21 in Morocco and will run until January 18, coming bang splat in the middle of the top flight campaign, which takes place between August 16 and May 24. The fixture schedule has not yet been finalised for the Premier League with how many matches AFCON stars will miss to be confirmed.
However, the Liverpool Echo has used this season as a template to find that AFCON would have overlapped with eight Liverpool matches - six of those were Premier League games, one was the Carabao Cup quarter final, one was the seventh Champions League fixture and then the last a Carabao Cup semi final (which otherwise would have been the FA Cup third round).
That means that a Chelsea player could miss up to 10 matches if at AFCON next season, with Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham stars perhaps absent for up to nine with those clubs not set to be in the Champions League.
Chelsea, West Ham and Tottenham Hotspur stars could be involved at AFCON
At Chelsea, Nicolas Jackson is the principle worry. The striker is part of the Senegal national team and there is also David Datro Fofana, who could represent the Ivory Coast. Meanwhile, Tottenham Hotspur could see midfielder Yves Bissouma away representing Mali while West Ham winger Mohammed Kudus is part of the Ghana international set-up.
The importance of AFCON and its impact on the Premier League was the centre of talk in February when Sky Sports pundit Jamie Carragher suggested it was not a ‘major tournament’. The former defender said: "I think the problem is the fact he's with Egypt, and he's probably not playing in the major tournament as such, or maybe got a great chance of winning, I think it's either the Champions League or the major tournament. Normally, the player who excels in that."
Former Manchester City man Micah Richards replied: “I’ll just say, AFCON is a major tournament. A lot of people at home will say they’re taking that seriously. AFCON is a major tournament, just so you know.”
Also in the studio, Daniel Sturridge hit back: “It’s a fact, it’s a fact. If you win the Euros or the Copa America it’s deemed to be big, so AFCON is on the same level.”
In other news, Chelsea 'closely monitoring' 8-goal Premier League forward who is 'very intense'.