CAN 2025: The Paradox of Origins and the Urgency to Save African Championships Through the CHAN 6344
Figures are sometimes more eloquent and edifying than speeches. The 2025 Africa Cup of Nations (CAN), unfolding under the banner of diversity and the diaspora, reveals a deeply worrying reality for the future of African football: **Africa now only partially nurtures its own flagship competition**. It imports it to a very large extent.
According to a Foot Mercato study, France is the leading country of birth for players at CAN 2025, with 107 players born on its soil. A staggering figure, unmatched by any African country. Île-de-France alone provides 45 players, making it the most prolific region in the CAN—ahead of historic African football capitals like Abidjan, Bamako, Casablanca, or Dakar. This observation is far from anecdotal. It is structural, historical, and political. In reality, it represents a complete reversal of the course of history.
For decades, the CAN was the showcase for African championships. Remember the one won by Morocco in 1976... Local competitions in Egypt, Cameroon, Ghana, Morocco, Tunisia, or Nigeria were the natural reservoirs for national teams. The CAN was an extension of domestic football, its pinnacle and international realization. Today, the course of history has reversed.
It is no longer African championships that feed the CAN, but European training centers, European clubs, and European sports systems. Across all squads, 186 players were born in Europe—more than a quarter of participants. And this figure says nothing about the actual place of training, which is overwhelmingly European even for players born in Africa. With exceptions like Morocco's Mohammed VI Academy and Senegal's Génération Foot to a lesser extent.
Thus, African championships are progressively relegated to the role of national entertainment leagues—very useful for sustaining local passion but disconnected from the continental top level. The African Champions League and the CAF Confederation Cup remain quite anecdotal.
The diaspora is certainly an immeasurable wealth... but it can also signal a failure. It would be absurd to deny the human and cultural richness represented by the diaspora. CAN 2025 is a global crossroads of trajectories, memories, and multiple identities. Morocco's national team—a mix of players born and trained in the country and others born in various countries—perfectly illustrates this positive globalization of African football. But for some countries on the continent, this diversity masks a collective admission: Africa can no longer retain, train, and develop its talents on its own soil until their sporting maturity.
Young players leave earlier and earlier. The best sometimes never even pass through an African championship. They arrive in the national team as "finished products," shaped elsewhere according to different economic and sporting logics.
In this context, the CHAN becomes a strategic necessity, not a secondary competition at all. The African Nations Championship takes on a crucial dimension. Too often seen as a second-tier event, it is actually the last structuring bulwark for the survival and credibility of African championships.
Today, the CHAN is:
- the only continental competition that exclusively promotes players from local leagues;
- the only space where African clubs gain visibility on a continental scale;
- a concrete lever to slow the early exodus of talents;
- a tool for positive pressure on states and federations to improve infrastructure, governance, and league competitiveness.
Without the CHAN, African championships gradually disappear from the international—and even continental—radar.
There is thus an imperative need to develop the CHAN to rebalance African football. Simply continuing to organize it is no longer enough. It must be strengthened, promoted, and fully integrated into the CAF's overall strategy for:
- Better media exposure;
- Better calendar alignment with local leagues;
- Real financial incentives for clubs;
- Clear articulation between CHAN, interclub competitions, and CAN.
The CHAN must become what it should always have been: the foundation of African football, not its appendix. Countries that haven't understood this or hold a contrary view should come to their senses and step up. This concerns them and the continent as a whole in reclaiming control of our own football narrative.
CAN 2025 tells a beautiful story of diasporas and shared roots. But it also tells a more worrying story: that of a continent applauding talents it no longer produces at home—or only partially.
Faced with this reality, abandoning or marginalizing the CHAN would be a historic mistake. Strengthening it, on the contrary, is choosing sporting sovereignty, economic sustainability, and the dignity of African football. It's also the best way to secure a strong position as a major player in world football. The Kingdom of Morocco has perfectly integrated this. It is present at every CHAN edition and doesn't play the role of a mere bystander. On the contrary, it knows full well that this continental competition, like youth categories, is the true springboard and a solid platform for harmonious and sustainable development.
Without strong championships, there is no strong football.
Without the CHAN, there will soon be no more African football... only football of African origin.
