Rangers face AFCON loss of 4 key players for crucial period.
Rangers could be without four key players for more than a month during the crucial festive period due to this year’s rescheduled African Cup of Nations.
Cyriel Dessers, Mohamed Diomande, Hamza Igamane, and Nasser Djiga could all miss crucial away games against Celtic, Aberdeen, and Hearts.
The massive African tournament is usually held in January and February, but this year’s Finals will take place in December and January in Morocco.
FIFA changed the dates due to the Champions League’s new format, which includes key league stage games in late January, and the original plan to hold AFCON this summer was scrapped after the Club World Cup was expanded and moved there instead.
That means the tournament will be scheduled around the holidays, which is bad news for Rangers. As things stand, Dessers would play for Nigeria, Diomande for Ivory Coast, Igamane for Morocco, and Djiga for Burkina Faso in the tournament.
FIFA has yet to announce the minimum period in which clubs must release their players, but the quartet could miss five league games and a Scottish Cup tie.
The bad news for Rangers is that they have arguably their three toughest away trips of the season – to Celtic, Aberdeen, and Hearts, plus the Old Firm game on January 3 at Parkhead. They would also be required to miss home games against Motherwell and St Mirren, depending on how far the teams advance in the competition.
It is the seventh African Cup of Nations in a row that has not gone ahead as originally scheduled due to a variety of reasons, including instability in Libya and an outbreak of Ebola in Guinea, delays in the construction of stadiums in Cameroon, Covid and the rainy season in the Ivory Coast.
However, the new schedule is likely to cause major headaches for Ibrox manager Russell Martin.
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