Football - AUSC Region 5 Games |03 December 2022

The Seychelles team in Malawi

More games for Seychelles as Mauritius withdraw and Angola fail MRI tests

Mauritius have withdrawn and Angola disqualified from the football competition of the African Union Sports Council (AUSC) Region 5 Youth Games being held in Malawi, turning the fixtures upside down. Instead of three pools of three teams as per the previous draw, there are now only two groups, one of three and the other four, with Seychelles in the latter, which is now group B.

The Seychelles Under-17 national team will now play three group games instead of two as they attempt to qualify for the semifinal of the competition which also serves as the Council of Southern Africa Football Associations (Cosafa) qualifier for the TotalEnergies U17 Africa Cup of Nations.

Zambia and Mozambique remain in the Seychelles group which now also includes South Africa.

Hosts Malawi, Botswana and Namibia are in group A and they will play two games each. The top two teams in each pool advance to the semifinals.

Mauritius notified Cosafa on Wednesday that they would be withdrawing their teams from the competition. Mauritius had entered teams for both the boys’ and girls’ events.

As for the Angola boys’ team they were disqualified from the competition this week after some of their players failed the age determining magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) assessments.

To participate in the competition all players had to undertake MRI age determining tests in their own countries to present to the organisers upon arrival in Malawi to certify that they are of the proper age group to prevent teams from fielding older players.

The organisers reserved the right to do random retests or if they became suspicious. It was during those retests that Angola failed.

For the Seychelles team, all MRI tests were carried out at the Sheik Khalifa Diagnostic Centre at the Seychelles Hospital free of charge by the Ministry of Health prior to their departure.

With the revised fixtures, the Seychelles team will play their first match today at 3.30pm Malawian time against South Africa.

They will meet Zambia on December 5 and Mozambique on December 7. Both matches will be played at 3.30pm.

The semifinals will take place on December 9 and the final two days later. All the matches will be played at the Bingu National Stadium in Lilongwe.

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