Women's African Cup of Nations (football)

[puffyisgood]

It kicks off in a few days' time.

A couple of observations:

(a) They're playing it in Morocco, in July, with many of the games played during the daytime. It feels like it the men's game would always try to avoid something so dangerous.

(b) Mumsnet mods/censors' favourite Barbra Banda somehow seems to be playing in the tournament, despite having previously been, we were told at time, ineligible on gender grounds. I wonder what changed?

www.cafonline.com/caf-womens-africa-cup-of-nations/news/barbra-banda-zambia-africa-is-my-foundation/

onefootball.com/en/news/africa-cup-of-nations-barbra-banda-banned-due-to-gender-eligibility-issues-35400347

FIFA needs to get it’s house in order.

BB really does seem to expect to play:

https://en.africatopsports.com/2025/06/29/dont-rule-zambia-out-warns-barbra-banda-ahead-of-wafcon/

The only hope is that this is picked up by the media and/or opposition teams.
A cheek swab is surely the way forward for all women’s sport.

bizarrely, afcon seems to have changed its policy to bring it in line with that of FIFA, ie one that's tolerant of male DSD players in women's football.

such players aren't too uncommon in African football but for some reason the condition seems disproportionately prevalent in Zambia. as you say, an opposing team may well kick off about it at some point.

the forward Kundananji has failed a sex (presumably chromosome and/or testosterone) test in the past, though by the looks of her I'd say that she likely has a condition such as CAIS but then within the rest of the squad there are fully five members (basically the entire attack) who there are excellent reasons to think are likely 46 XY 5-ARD: Banda & also Mupopo, Mukona, Nachula, and Chilufya.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zambia_women%27s_national_football_team

sorry that link doesn't work, I can't make it.

Ffs

there's something faintly insulting about this coverage, though I can't quite put my finger on what...

https://www.cafonline.com/caf-womens-africa-cup-of-nations/news/barbra-banda-the-big-boss-is-here/

Infuriating.
I'd struggle to find TV or radio coverage of the competition but this kind of thing makes me not want to even try.

And I agree that the hottest time of the year is not ideal but Morocco is probably comparable to the Med or central Europe in terms of heat.

Let’s hope that Senegal will beat Zambia tomorrow..

I'm pretty sure there is at least one man in several other sides, unfortunately. It's not just Zambia.

I'm not sure there are too many. Maybe other countries self-police somehow.

Zambia is the example that's both glaring and high profile, because there seems to be a strong pathway to playing in the USA's NWSL.

The joint (with Banda) best player/top scorer in the NWSL, Chawingwa, also appears to be a DSD male, but plays for a relatively minor country (Malawi) who aren't in this tournament.

Interesting. Maybe high profile international athletics isn’t the lure it once was for DSD males with athletic ability, a desire for a lucrative career and an utter disregard for the well being -both physical and financial - of female team mates.

And someone is recruiting these men, deliberately.

I would quote Tom Cruise on this and say “ Follow the money.”

Yes indeed, thanks to Seb Coe and World Athletics. Football is an easier target because of Fifa and NWSL rules.

Athletics is still potentially lucrative at the very top level but DSD males are flat not allowed. So, yes, a young Caster Semenya growing up today would definitely be steered towards football [which barely existed as a pro sport in her day] rather than athletics.

There are at least one or two African players who have switched from athletics to football mid career, such as the Zabian forward Mupopo, I'll leave others to speculate what might have driven this switch.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabange_Mupopo

[sorry, duplicate].

In the same way that men are being ousted from women’s and girl’s sports in the USA we can only hope that the public will wake up to these cheats in the NWSL and they will be tested for DSDs.

When will FIFA wake up. FFS!

Yesterday sadly saw a 3-2 win for Zambia, with two goals for Banda [and the third goal scored by another player who was also ruled out of a previous tournament on grounds of sex testing].

The game seemed to largely pass the world's attention by, with a handful of exceptions including a brief exchange of Tweets about it between Sharron Davies & the mother of dear old Emily Bridges.

I get that it's a relatively low profile tournament - the game that I know of wasn't live on TV anywhere, and the stadium looked almost empty in the few highlight clips that I saw... but... this stuff really does matter. Not only is it distorting the very top end of the world's only pro league in which women can earn really decent money, (first and second place in the NWSL's MVP awards went to DSD males) but, well, the Senegalese players yesterday I daresay sacrificed a lot to play for their country & get to this tournament [I'd be very pleasantly surprised if they are full-time professionals in the sense that we understand it the term the UK] and surely deserve better than to be more or less knocked out of the tournament by... well, men?

Who will speak for the women disadvantaged by this cheating....

I wonder what's going on behind the scenes here. They had a sensible policy, and every other organisation in the world is moving towards the same sensible policy, so why change it?

Would it be unreasonable to think there might be pressure from US-based companies that sponsor both this tournament and the male players and/or their US teams? Don't outfits like Nike have form here?

Yes I’m sure that US sports companies and teams like Orlando Pride are applying financial pressure to continue with this farcical competition.
Information is being suppressed and supporters of women-only teams are obviously unaware of the male cheats.