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AFTER a year, in which there has been no international football on the continent, the Confederation of African Football announced this week that they have set the possible return of national team competitions for November.

The programme was halted in March when the third and fourth matches of the 2021 AFCON qualifiers were scheduled to be played.

The coronavirus outbreak forced the CAF leadership to postpone the matches, indefinitely, as countries closed their borders in an attempt to prevent the spread of the killer virus.

The Warriors were scheduled to take on reigning African champions, Algeria, in back-to-back matches, when the qualifiers were suspended.

By February, a few weeks before the first match in Algeria, ZIFA had already started raising alarm bells, making it clear they were not comfortable sending the Warriors to the North African country, amid rising infections which were being reported there.

However, a few weeks later, when the CAF leaders acted, by suspending all international matches on the continent, a number of African countries had not only reported rising numbers of Covid-19 infections, but some of them were already closing their borders.

Football is the continent’s number one sport and, in his recent contribution to the organisation’s latest newsletter, CAF president, Ahmad Ahmad, conceded that, without the game, things have looked rather grim this year.

“Like all of you, we have a burning desire to get back to the normal flow of African football life and, let’s be frank, we are also very eager to relive those unique atmospheres that give the chills in the stadiums,’’ Ahmad said.

“But, the main thing is the health for all, the preservation of a good quality of life and the fight for health prevention, the real football atmospheres will return once these objectives are obtained.’’

However, this week, CAF leaders unveiled a programme, in which they hope the 2021 AFCON qualifiers will herald the restart of international football on the continent in November.

The new calendar shows the Warriors will now face the Desert Foxes between November 9 and 17 this year, with the first match in Algeria and the second in Zimbabwe.

“The CAF Emergency Committee has approved the resumption date for qualifiers of the Total Africa Cup of Nations Cameroon 2021 and the group stage of the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022,” the organisation said in a statement.

“A busy schedule awaits the participating teams with double-headers from November 2020 through to November 2021 in the battle for spots to the final tournament of the two competitions.

“The schedules for the two competitions have had to be revised in light of the Covid-19 outbreak, which halted many sporting activities across the continent and beyond, for some time.

“For Cameroon 2021, the qualifiers resume on 9-17 November 2020 with the Day 3 and 4 matches whilst the penultimate and ultimate matches take place on 22-30 March 2021.”

The Warriors will then have two outstanding matches, against Zambia at home, and Botswana away, should they play those fixtures in November.

Those matches, according to CAF, are scheduled to be played next year given the tournament has already been moved to January 2022 in Cameroon.

We have seen competitive football resuming on the continent with the Zambian Super League playing a number of fixtures, which were outstanding, when their programme was halted by Covid-19.

The South African Premiership has also resumed with the Supa Diski leaders desperate to try and complete the 2019-2020 season to ensure they satisfy contractual obligations they have with their sponsors, including broadcasters SuperSport TV.

But, as we saw in Zambia, when the authorities there were forced to again suspend the season this month and cancel the championship after 27 matches, the return of football, in these trying times, is not as easy as it sounds.

The South African Premiership can afford to foot huge costs related to keeping all the teams, officials and referees in quarantine, where they do not come into contact with anyone who is not authorised to be part of the show.

The huge money in Supa Diski makes it possible for officials in that country to keep the clubs, players and referees in secluded hotels, for weeks, and this has enabled them to play a number of fixtures since the restart.

However, when it comes to matches involving different countries, as is the case with AFCON qualifiers, it’s a different ball game altogether.

Here, consideration will have to be made as to how those countries, that might feel the arrival of a foreign team might not be in the best interest of the health of their people, when it comes to dealing with Covid-19, will be accommodated in the revised calendar.

While some experts have been saying there have been some encouraging signs in the past few days, with the number of infections going down across the continent, that cannot be used as an excuse to open up the spaces and resume football, if we haven’t tamed this pandemic.

As we have seen in New Zealand, which was being celebrated around the world as a model of how to deal with this pandemic, when it reported about 100 days without local infections, things can change very quickly when it comes to Covid-19.

We all want to see our boys back in action.

Football is our sport on this continent, but we have to be careful about taking huge gambles because this sport is not as important as life.