CHAN 2024 — DR Congo: should the Dubai training camp have gone ahead at the expense of the league?

CHAN 2024 will not take place until next August, but DR Congo are already preparing. The Leopards spent 9 days at a training camp in Dubai, playing two friendlies: a 3-0 win over Golfe United and a 0-0 draw with Al-Jazira SC. However, the decision to go ahead with the camp despite the tournament being postponed until next August caused considerable controversy.

Also read : CHAN 2024: DR Congo drawn with Morocco, Senegal with Nigeria

A clash with the domestic league

For many sports analysts, the camp should simply have been cancelled once the tournament was postponed. Going ahead with it would delay the start of the second half of the Illicocash Ligue 1 regular season by up to two weeks. “This camp should have been cancelled. All it did was delay the end of the first half of the league’s regular season. Mazembe and Manière Union would have finished their outstanding matches on 29 January, but now Maniema Union have to keep playing until 5 February. When will the second half of the regular season start? We have wasted time needlessly ”, said sports analyst Eric Banza.

Eddy Kanku Kadima raised another concern: there is no guarantee that the squad will be the same in August. “This camp makes no sense. The players selected today are not certain to be the same ones in August. We should have let them play in the league to stay in form and scheduled another camp later”, he said.

The sports ministry explains its decision

After the controversy surrounding the camp, the sports ministry sought to clarify the situation. CHAN 2024 was postponed only a day before the camp was originally due to begin, by which point spending had already been committed. “CAF postponed the tournament at the last minute. That is a fairly rare occurrence, and several countries had already arranged their preparation camps, paid for hotels, bought plane tickets and even scheduled friendlies. Organising a team’s training camp is not easy. The clubs that agreed to release their players to the national team are not run by amateurs. DR Congo has major club officials, whom I will not name here, who contribute to the progress of our national teams. For more than 10 years, FECOFA has used international agencies to arrange camps and matches. These agencies mostly finance the camps upfront, and the state pays the bills through the federation”, an official statement said.

To avoid fuelling the controversy and disrupting the squad’s concentration in Dubai, the coaching staff decided not to release any updates on the camp. The first images and information about the matches were only shared with the press on the final day.