Yesterday (Friday 14th November) it was announced that the Africa Cup of Nations will officially now be hosted by Equatorial Guinea from January 17 – February 8, 2015, after Morocco was thrown out as hosts earlier this week due to their insistence to delay the tournament for fear of the spread of the Ebola virus into their country, thus bringing an end to a bizarre ordeal for the Confederation of African Football (CAF).
Last week Morocco sent a letter to CAF requesting a postponement of the tournament, due to fear of Ebola, proposing it be delayed to 2016, however, the CAF denied the request and ousted Morocco as hosts of the biggest tournament on the continent after their insistence to not hold the tournament on the scheduled dates. Following the news of Morocco’s exit as tournament hosts, the CAF was left scrambling to find a new host for the tournament. One by one as the week wore on, countries initially interested in hosting pulled out due to various reasons from lack of preparation time to budgetary reasons. It sounds like in the end it came down to Egypt, Gabon, Nigeria and Equatorial Guinea. Morocco will now lose their automatic bid into the tournament as hosts, since the tournament will now be hosted elsewhere and risk further sanctions by the CAF.
Morocco cited health concerns as their main reason for not wanting to host the tournament in January, however, next month FIFA’s Club World Cup will be played in, you guessed it, Morocco. The games will be played in two cities, Rabat and Marrakesh, beginning on December 10. The seven team tournament will include the champions of Europe, Real Madrid as well as two teams from Africa, Moghreb Tetouan (Morocco) and ES Setif (Algeria). The organizers argue that the crowds that will come to this tournament aren’t traveling from countries suffering from the Ebola virus, therefore, not as big a health concern as the Africa Cup of Nations (ACON) since some of the participating countries are coming from areas affected by the deadly virus.
Reasons for the CAF not willing to budge on a postponement vary depending on sources. CAF president Issa Hayatou has mentioned the fact that postponing the tournament could inconvenience players who play in Europe more than they already are by having to miss club games for the ACON or that sponsors would be hurt if the tournament did not go on as planned. Each of these reasons, while skeptically believable, clearly can’t be the actual one. It cannot be denied that the ACON is the CAF’s main source of revenue, thus not wanting to postpone the tournament for a year could have been more of a financial decision by the CAF than of one to not burden the players or sponsors.
The new hosts for ACON, Equatorial Guinea, co-hosted the tournament once before in 2012, so they have experience with the tournament. In 2012, the country only hosted games in two cities, this go around; they will host in four cities and have only two months to prepare for the continent to descend upon the country for one of the larger sporting events in the world. The kicker here is that Equatorial Guinea will now receive the automatic bid, vacated by Morocco, as hosts of the tournament after being disqualified from the qualification process for fielding an ineligible player in their two leg first round match up against Mauritania, a two leg game in which Equatorial Guinea won 3-1 on aggregate. The team did the same thing in qualifications for the 2014 World Cup, where they fielded an ineligible player in two of their second round games. Their opponent, Cape Verde Islands, in both games received the full six points and left Equatorial Guinea at the bottom of their group and eliminated from World Cup contention.
It has always been argued that the CAF is behind all the other soccer associations in the world, and unfortunately, incidents such as what transpired this week only goes to reinforce those beliefs. Now that ACON has a home, the real work is to get the country ready to host 16 of the top teams on the continent to declare Africa’s champion.
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