| Tourney Name: | Africa U-17 Cup of Nations |
| Year: | 2021 |
| Country: | Morocco |
| Dates: | Cancelled |
| Num Teams: | 12 |
| Confederations: | 1 |
| Prevseason: | 2019 |
| Nextseason: | 2023 |
The 2021 U-17 Africa Cup of Nations, known for sponsorship purposes as the 2021 Total U-17 Africa Cup of Nations, was planned to be the 14th edition (19th if editions of the tournament without hosts are included) of the biennial African youth football tournament organized by the Confederation of African Football (CAF) for players aged 17 and below. Cameroon would have been the defending champions.
CAF announced Morocco as hosts of this edition in September 2018.[1] This would have been the first edition of the tournament to feature 12 teams in the group stages instead of 8 from previous editions.[2] The semi-finalists would have normally qualified for the 2021 FIFA U-17 World Cup in Peru as the CAF representatives. However, FIFA decided on 24 December 2020 to cancel that tournament due to the COVID-19 pandemic.[3]
This edition of the tournament was originally scheduled to take place between 13 and 31 March 2021. However, CAF announced on 8 March 2021 that the tournament had been cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic both in Morocco and in Africa at large.[4] Zambia offered to host the tournament at a later date to be agreed upon with CAF[5] [6] which never materialized.
See main article: 2021 Africa U-17 Cup of Nations qualification.
On 20 July 2017, CAF decided that the qualification format should be changed and split according to zones.[7]
Players born 1 January 2004 or later are eligible to participate in the competition.
The following twelve teams qualified for the final tournament.
Note: All appearance statistics count only those since the introduction of final tournament in 1995.
| Team | Zone | data-sort-type="number" | Appearance | Previous best performance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| (hosts) | North Zone | 3rd | (2013) | |
| North Zone | 2nd | (2009) | ||
| West A Zone | 3rd | (2011, 2019) | ||
| West A Zone | 9th | (2015, (2017) | ||
| West B Zone | 10th | (2001, 2007) | ||
| West B Zone | 6th | (2013) | ||
| Central-East Zone | 3rd | (2017, 2019) | ||
| Central-East Zone | 2nd | (2019) | ||
| Central Zone | 8th | (2003, 2019) | ||
| Central Zone | 3rd | (2011) | ||
| South Zone | 4th | (2015) | ||
| South Zone | 2nd | (2015) |
The draw of the group stage was held on 24 February 2021, 13:00 WAT (UTC+1).[8] The 12 qualified teams were drawn into 3 groups of 4 teams.
The top two teams of each group advance to the quarter-finals along with the two best 3rd placed teams.
Tiebreakers:
Teams are ranked according to the three points for a win system (3 for a win, 1 for a draw and 0 or none for a loss) and if tied on points, the following tie-breaking criteria are applied, in the order given, to determine the rankings (Regulations Article 71):Web site: 20 October 2020. U-17 AFCON Regulations. CAFOnline.com. 13 January 2021.
All times are in WAT (UTC+1).[9]
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Per statistical convention in football, matches decided in extra time are counted as wins and losses, while matches decided by a penalty shoot-out are counted as draws.
|-| colspan="11"| Eliminated in the quarter-finals|-|-| colspan="11"| Eliminated in group stage|-
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Algeria
Angola
Cameroon
Somalia
South Africa