2024 COSAFA Cup

2024 COSAFA Cup

Tournament details
Host country	South Africa
City	Gqeberha
Dates	26 June–7 July 2024
Teams	12 (from 1 confederation)
Venue(s)	2 (in 1 host city)
Final positions
Champions	Angola (4th title)
Runners-up	Namibia
Third place	Mozambique
Fourth place	Comoros
Tournament statistics
Matches played	22
Goals scored	47 (2.14 per match)
Top scorer(s)	Depú (5 goals)
Best player(s)	Maestro
Best goalkeeper	Armando Doutor
← 2023 2025 →

The 2024 COSAFA Cup was the 23rd edition of the annual association football competition organized by COSAFA. It was held in South Africa for the seventh straight year, this time in Gqeberha (Port Elizabeth), from 26 June to 7 July 2024.^[1] Zambia are the defending champions and they were eliminated during the group stage.

Participating nations

Twelve nations featured in the 2024 edition of the tournament. Two COSAFA members, Madagascar and Mauritius, did not participate.^[2] Zimbabwe returned to the tournament for the first time since the 2021 edition following its FIFA ban.^[3] Despite originally being announced as a participant, Malawi withdrew from the tournament prior to the group draw out of respect for eight victims of a plane crash earlier that week. One of the victims was former Vice-President of Malawi Saulos Chilima.^[4] Kenya accepted COSAFA’s invitation to participate as a guest to replace Malawi.^[5]

National team	FIFA Ranking (4 April 2024)[6]	Best Performance
Eswatini	148	Semi-finals (1999, 2002, 2003, 2021)
Comoros	117	Group stage
Lesotho	149	Runners-up (2000, 2023)
Botswana	146	Runners-up (2016, 2019)
Zambia	86	Champions (1997, 1998, 2006, 2013, 2019, 2022, 2023)
Mozambique	110	Runners-up (2008, 2015)
Namibia	106	Champions (2015)
South Africa	59	Champions (2002, 2007, 2008, 2016, 2021)
Angola	94	Champions (1999, 2001, 2004)
Seychelles	197	Group stage
Zimbabwe	122	Champions (2000, 2003, 2005, 2009, 2017, 2018)
Kenya (Guest)	107	Group stage

Format

The twelve participating teams were drawn into three groups of four teams. As the defending champions, Zambia and the next two highest ranked teams, Angola and South Africa, were in separate groups as the seeded teams. Group winners and the best runner-up will moved on to the semi-finals.^[2]

Dates

Originally scheduled to be held 14 to 23 June 2024, the competition was then postponed.^[7] At the time the date change was announced, nations had already begun naming their squads and leagues had altered their season schedules to accommodate the tournament. COSAFA stated that the postponement was necessarily to give the competition maximum exposure, presumably because of a number of high-profile competitions that would have been taking place at the same time.^[8][9] On 13 June 2024, COSAFA announced the tournament would be played from 26 June to 7 July 2024.^[2]

Draw

The draw for the group stage of the 2024 COSAFA Cup was held on 14 June 2024 in Johannesburg.^[2][10]

Venues

Gqeberha	Gqeberha	Gqeberha
Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium		Wolfson Stadium
Capacity: 42,486		Capacity: 10,000

Group 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:

1. Points in head-to-head matches among tied teams;
2. Goal difference in head-to-head matches among tied teams;
3. Goals scored in head-to-head matches among tied teams;
4. 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;
5. Goal difference in all group matches;
6. Goals scored in all group matches;
7. Penalty shoot-out if only two teams are tied and they met in the last round of the group;
8. Disciplinary points (yellow card = 1 point, red card as a result of two yellow cards = 3 points, direct red card = 3 points, yellow card followed by direct red card = 4 points);
9. Drawing of lots.

Group stage matches were played from 26 June to 3 July 2024.^[10]

Group A

Pos	Team	Pld	W	D	L	GF	GA	GD	Pts	Qualification
1	Mozambique	3	1	2	0	4	2	+2	5	Advance to knockout stage
2	South Africa	3	1	2	0	2	1	+1	5
3	Eswatini	3	0	2	1	0	1	−1	2
4	Botswana	3	0	2	1	1	3	−2	2

---

---

Group B

Pos	Team	Pld	W	D	L	GF	GA	GD	Pts	Qualification
1	Comoros	3	2	0	1	3	1	+2	6	Advance to knockout stage
2	Kenya	3	2	0	1	4	2	+2	6
3	Zimbabwe	3	2	0	1	3	2	+1	6
4	Zambia	3	0	0	3	0	5	−5	0

---

---

Group C

Pos	Team	Pld	W	D	L	GF	GA	GD	Pts	Qualification
1	Angola	3	2	1	0	6	3	+3	7	Advance to knockout stage
2	Namibia	3	2	1	0	5	2	+3	7
3	Seychelles	3	0	1	2	4	7	−3	1
4	Lesotho	3	0	1	2	3	6	−3	1

---

---

Best Runner-up Table

Pos	Grp	Team	Pld	W	D	L	GF	GA	GD	Pts	Qualification
1	C	Namibia	3	2	1	0	5	2	+3	7	Advance to knockout stage
2	B	Kenya	3	2	0	1	4	2	+2	6
3	A	South Africa	3	1	2	0	2	1	+1	5

Knockout stage

Semi-final matches were played on 5 July 2024 with the third-place and final match played two days later.^[10]

Bracket

	Semi-Finals				Final
	5 July –Gqeberha
	Comoros	1
					7 July – Gqeberha
	Angola	2
					Angola	5
	5 July –Gqeberha
					Namibia	0
	Mozambique	0 (2)
	Namibia (p)	0 (4)
					Third-Place
					7 July - Gqeberha
					Comoros	2 (1)
					Mozambique (p)	2 (3)

Semi-finals

Third-place

Final

Statistics

Goalscorers

There were 47 goals scored in 22 matches, for an average of 2.14 goals per match.

5 goals

3 goals

2 goals

1 goal

References