the final to win their first title which made Morocco the first team to win the tournament on home soil.[3][4][5]
Host selection
Following the conclusion of
the final of the previous edition in Rwanda on 7 February 2016, CAF announced Kenya as the host nation of the next edition 48 hours later.[1][2][6] However, CAF decided to change the host nation on 23 September the following year due to a lack of progress with preparations[7] and open up a new tender process for a replacement team with the deadline of 30 September 2017. The countries who submitted to replace Kenya as hosts are:[8]
The Ethiopian Football Federation did not provide the government's letter of guarantee and were not considered; the CAF Emergency Committee decided on 15 October that year to choose Morocco over Equatorial Guinea.[9][10]
The qualification rounds took place from 20 April to 20 August 2017.[11]
Since Morocco had already qualified in the Northern Zone before replacing Kenya as hosts, their spot in the main phase was re-allocated to their opponents in the Northern Zone final qualifying round, Egypt.[12] However, Egypt declined to participate citing a "congested domestic calendar".[13] As a result, the spot was reverted to Central-East Zone (as originally three teams would participate including original-turned-stripped hosts Kenya), and would go to the winner of a play-off in November 2017 between Ethiopia and Rwanda, the two teams which lost in the Central-East Zone final qualifying round.[14]
Qualified teams
The following teams qualified for the group stage of this edition of the tournament:
The squads of the participating teams each consisting of 23 players per the tournament's regulation article 72[17] were announced by CAF on 10 January 2018.[18][19]
Match officials
A total of 32 match officials (16 referees and 16 assistant referees) were selected for this edition of the tournament, of which 7 were selected to operate the video assistant referee (VAR) system in a CAF competition for the first time ever, beginning at the knockout stages.[20][21][22]
Draw
The draw for the group stage was held at Sofitel Rabat in the Moroccan capital,
The teams were drawn into 4 groups of 4.[24] The hosts Morocco were seeded in Group A. The remaining teams were seeded based on their results in the four most recent editions of the tournament: 2009 (multiplied by 1), 2011 (multiplied by 2), 2014 (multiplied by 3), 2016 (multiplied by 4):[25][26][27]
7 points for winner
5 points for runner-up
3 points for semi-finalists
2 points for quarter-finalists
1 point for group stage
Based on the formula above, the 4 pots were allocated as follows:
The top two teams of each group advance to the knockout stage.
Tiebreakers
Teams are ranked according to
points (3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw, 0 points for a loss), and if tied on points, the following tiebreaking criteria are applied, in the order given, to determine the rankings (Regulations Article 74):[17]
Goals scored in head-to-head matches among tied teams;
If more than two teams are tied, and after applying all head-to-head criteria above, a subset of teams are still tied, all head-to-head criteria above are reapplied exclusively to this subset of teams;
As per statistical convention in football, matches decided in extra time are counted as wins and losses while matches decided by penalty shoot-outs are counted as draws.