COSAFA has received a late request from Zimbabwe to be included in the Boys’ and Girls’ football tournaments at the Region 5 Youth Games Maseru 2020.

Although this request was received past the cut-off deadline for inclusion, COSAFA’s mandate in the Region 5 Youth Games is to promote youth football and provide potentially life-changing opportunities to boys and girls from all our member countries.

In this context, we feel it would be wrong to exclude Zimbabwe and deny their players the opportunity to compete on this grand stage.

Zimbabwe will be added to the Girls competition as a fifth team in the single pool and that will remain a round-robin format.

But given that the Boys tournament was to be played in two pools of five teams each, Zimbabwe’s entry will require a re-draw.

The format of the competition will now be three pools, two with four teams and one with three. The draw will take place on Wednesday, October 27 at 11h00, and will be carried LIVE on COSAFA.TV.