Still over five months to go.
Group A: Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Cape Verde
Group B: Senegal, Zimbabwe, Guinea, Malawi
Group C: Morocco, Ghana, Comoros, Gabon
Group D: Nigeria, Egypt, Sudan, Guinea-Bissau
Group E: Algeria, Sierra Leone, Equatorial Guinea, Ivory Coast
Group F: Tunisia, Mali, Mauritania, Gambia
Another competition further screwed by meaningless expansion. 
I was really excited about it until the expansion.
So does this mean that nearly half the teams who fail still qualify.
Is there a point in groups? I think the Copa America canāt be topped for that to be fair 2 groups of 5 the top 4 qualify, topped off by the fact there was still nothing to play for in the final game.
Worseā¦16 out of 24 goes into the next round.
I donāt really mind the expansion of the tournament. A total of 54 countries can attempt to qualify for the competition (obviously the host nation qualifies by proxy so 53). Only 24 do make it to the finals - less than half. It means that more nations have a shot, and are therefore more likely to put more effort into national football. Also means more money for the various football associations of the nations - overall it seeks to strengthen African football.
I donāt like the 24 to 16 however - they should just go straight to the last 8, or even go one step further and just do straight knockouts from start. The extra round just longs it out, which is not what we want part way through the season with three of our lads away for upto a month.
Senegal and Guinea in the same group - Mane v Naby coming up. Increases the chances of one of our lads coming home early. Would expect all three of Egypt, Senegal and Guinea make the knockouts.
I donāt mind groups in these kind of tournaments itās just when effectively 8 out of 24 are knocked out.
Doesnāt improve the spectacle to be honest, though the Euros survived being awful because of it.
I think it helps when that second tier is rather evenly spread.
Iād rather they just invite another 8 and knock out two from each group. Rarely the third team does anything anyhow.
Still three months to go, and thereās no shortages of Bolsonaro in Africa 
I posted the below in the PL thread, however that thread becomes an in-match thread for non-Liverpool fixtures so it gets lost dead fast. Thought it useful to be here. I suspect there will be some fixture changes etc in the coming weeksā¦it might not even go ahead!
Also, our match against Chelsea is on 2 January, so we could be impacted there (as pointed out by @mattyhurst. If players are on a pre-tournament camp or have to do quarantining etc then that may be the case. AFCON kicks off on the 9 Jan. with Senegal and Guinea playing on the 10 Jan, and Egypt on the 11 Jan.
I canāt find any links but I know we were kind of confident we would have the African players for Chelsea before they flew out the next day, I assume Salah has enough influence to push that, and with his talk about winning trophies I am sure he would want the best for both his club and country.
I guess we will see
Can we still deal with Shrewsbury sans our three AFCON lads???
I doubt they would have played anyhow, thing is if we do win the Q final Klopp is going have to manage Jota, Firmino, Ox, Origi and Minamino across those games and the two PL games, I assume we may see something similar to the Preston game, may even see that Blair lad get another run out.
I also note he had Neco up there for the final 10 in Milan so I assume he is thinking that as well.
But that could all be flipped on its head as Egyptian club Al Ahly are ālobbying the African football governing body to instead kick off AFCON on January 3ā due to their involvement in the Club World Cup.
Surely they canāt move a tournament with its logistics this close
BREAKING: CAF are currently undertaking discussions about the possible cancellation of next monthās AFCON in Cameroon
Would be an unexpectedly fortuitous turn of events, a cancelation. Whoever heard of a Football body having any common sense? Mental.
Conflicting reports
Knew it was too good to be true. Damn.
Letās see. At the minute Iām not sure there is going to be any football at all in January.
Besides, usually cries of āfake newsā turn out to be, well, fake news.