When CAF announced that their club competitions from the CAF Champions League and CAF Confederations competition would have the group stage format expand from two pools to four starting with the 2017 format, there were a number of concerns.
How will the format of play be, will there be seeded teams, at what stage are teams entitled to enjoy the lucrative cash prizes?
At least now it is official, all the 16 teams that qualify for the group stages of the CAF Champions league will take home $550, 000 (about Shs1.83b),$275,000 (about Shs 986m) from the sponsors Total. That money will keep on increasing depending on how far teams advance in the tournament.
In the 2016 edition, nine teams received a bye to the first round of the CAF Champions League while 13 did so in the CAF Confederations Cup. CAF is yet to confirm whether they will maintain the same number or it will actually increase.
After the qualifying and preliminary rounds, the 16 winners of the first round advance to the group stage of the CAF Champions League.
While the 16 losers of the first round of the CAF Champions League enter the CAF Confederation Cup play-off round against the winners of the first round with the latter hosting the second leg. The 16 winners of the play-off will round advance to the group stages of the CAF Confederations Cup.
In the group stages of both competitions, the 16 teams will be drawn into four groups of four. Each group will be played on a home-and-away round-robin basis. The winners and runners-up of each group advance to the quarter-finals.
In the quarter-finals, the winners of one group play the runners-up of another group, with the group winners hosting the second leg.
Both competitions have been slated to start on February 10, 2017 and end by November 25, 2017 and Uganda will be presented by 2015/2016 league winners KCCA FC and 2016 Uganda Cup winners Vipers in the in the Champions league Confederations Cup respectively.
