The head of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) has questioned whether Cameroon is ready to host Africa’s biggest football event next year. Ahmad Ahmad has questioned Cameroon’s ability to host in 2019.

Ahmad Ahmad also opened the door of speculations that the location of the Africa Cup of Nations might be changed. “I am not sure Cameroon is ready to host the AFCON,” Ahmad told KweséESPN on Monday, August 27.

He added that “there are many things which are still wanting and yet there is little time left.” In 2017, Ahmad had asked the African country to make more efforts to convince the confederation that they were able to host CAN 2019.

Ahmad also said CAF now sends experts to inspect the host country selected as the host of the competition. CAF’s experts were sent in August 2017, but it is unclear what their decision has been.

The experts, however, do not seem to be satisfied with what Cameroon has offered so far. “It would be dangerous to risk African players, especially the professionals plying their trade in Europe and other continents, to play under difficult conditions and facilities,” Ahmad said in his recent statement to KweséESPN.

There were speculations that Morocco was interested in hosting the tournament. Head of Morocco’s Royal Football Federation (FRMF) and the Ministry of Youth and Sports both denied the rumors, emphasizing that Cameroon would host the tournament, and Morocco had not thought about replacing it.

The CAF president also said in an interview with Cameroon outlet Camfoot published August 9 that the competition “will be held in Cameroon … until proven otherwise.”

CAN 2019 will boast the participation of 24 national teams, up from the usual 16. For the qualifier games, Morocco will play against Malawi September 8 in Casablanca, Comoros on October 10, and Cameroon on November 17.

Despite its difficulties preparing for the continental tournament, Cameroonian presidential candidate Joshua Osih wants his country to present its candidature as a potential host for the 2030 World Cup.

Source: Morocco World News

Former Egypt goalkeeper Ahmed Shobeir has said Cameroon would be stripped of the hosting rights for the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations with Morocco already lined up as replacement.

Widespread media reports in Egypt on Monday suggested that severe delays in the progress of work has resulted in the decision to strip Cameroon of the right to host the competition.

According to reports in Egypt, a final decision is expected to by taken during the CAF Congress in September with an inspection mission in Cameroon in the month of August unlikely to take place.

Ahmad refused to answer questions on the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations in Cameroon on Monday on Egyptian television, saying it would be discussed at CAF’s extraordinary congress in September to be held in Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt.

Authorities in Cameroon have maintained the country is ready to host the tournament which has been expanded to 24 teams for the first time.

The Prime Minister and Head of Government Philemon Yang was in one of the host cities, Douala to assess the level of works. He has also been to other construction sites around the country.

Source: Journal du Cameroun

The Ghanaian government has decided to dissolve the country’s football association after claims, in an undercover documentary, of bribe-taking by referees and kickbacks to top officials.

Information minister Mustapha Abdul-Hamid said “the government had decided to take immediate steps to have the GFA (Ghana Football Association) dissolved” because of the “widespread nature of the apparent rot”.

The revelations, filmed over two years by an investigative journalist and first revealed on Wednesday, have sent shockwaves through Ghana, where football is the national sport.

the government had decided to take immediate steps to have the GFA (Ghana Football Association) dissolved because of the widespread nature of the apparent rot.

Abdul-Hamid said the government was “shocked and outraged” at the claims, which included referees apparently accepting bribes of at least $100 to throw matches.

He also apparently tried to profit personally from a $5 million-a-year, five-year sponsorship deal with the GFA in what the expose said was a “clear breach” of ethics.

The information minister said the documentary “exposes gross malfunctioning of the Ghana Football Association characterised by widespread fraud, corruption and bribery”.

The conduct of all GFA officials and the suspended director-general of the National Sports Authority, Robert Sarfo Mensah, was referred to police for further investigation and any “appropriate action”, he added.

Provisional measures will be put in place to run the sport in Ghana until a new body is formed.

REUTERS

“Cameroon’s ability to host the 2019 Africa football Cup of Nations depends on the availability of adapted modern infrastructure,” said Oumarou Tado, secretary general of Cameroon’s Ministry of Sports and Physical Education.

“It is regrettable that many of these new projects have led to vast deforestation – but we had to meet the strict (guidelines) of the African football confederation,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

In Yaounde, the capital, about 34 hectares of trees were cut to build the new Olembe stadium, about 13 km from the centre of the city. In Limbe, 30 hectares of forests were removed to create space for a stadium and a sport training facility.

Much more land has been cleared to build other facilities related to the 2019 competition, including roads, hotels and large new tracts of housing, environmentalists say.

Part of what has driven tree cutting, Tado said, is that specifications for Cup of Nations infrastructure improvements require the new facilities to be built in areas that are easily accessible but without traffic problems.

“These specifications were found in forested areas on the outskirts of major cities,” he said.

Cameroon’s legendary World Cup soccer player Roger Milla, a sports ambassador for the country, said forested areas had to give way to improve the country’s sporting facilities, noting that “to make omelets one has to break eggs”.

“Cameroon is a lead football nation in Africa but paradoxically without modern sports infrastructure. We have been waiting for this for a long time,” said Milla, whose foundation Coeur d’Afrique has taken part in tree planting efforts in Yaounde since 2016.

‘A BIG THREAT’

Environment experts, however, have criticised the decision to build on forested areas, saying urban trees must be protected if the country is to avoid worsening impacts of climate change, including flooding and droughts.

“Forests are very important in regulating city climate, thus their loss or degradation is a major source of emissions of carbon dioxide, which contributes to climate change and is a big threat to the livelihood of the population,” said Samuel Nguifo, executive director of the Centre for Environment and Development, a Yaounde environmental non-profit.

He said forests act as “air conditioners” for cities, cooling residents suffering increasingly hot weather.

Cameroon has in recent years seen large areas of forest cut for mining projects, new ports, hydroelectric dams and other projects under the country’s Vision 2035 project.

That economic development plan aims to slash widespread unemployment and cut Cameroon’s poverty rate from 40 percent in 2007 to less than 20 percent by 2035.

More than half of all the tree losses were in the Centre, South, East and Littoral regions where most new investment projects are concentrated, the data showed.

Adding football infrastructure has now made the pressure on Cameroon’s existing “deforestation hotspots” worse, forest experts said.

“These new sports infrastructure projects will only increase the susceptibility of these cities to the effects of climate change,” said Julius Chuezi Tieguhong, a forest researcher with the African Forest Forum.

The cities of Douala, Yaounde and Limbe have in recent years faced worsening water shortages, floods and rising temperatures – all problems likely to become worse as forest is cut, Tieguhong said.

In 2017, some roads and buildings in Cameroon’s economic hub, Douala, were submerged following days of heavy rains, while in Yaounde the sight of women and children trekking across the city to fetch scarce drinking water has become increasingly common.

REPLANTING PUSH

Cameroon’s government, however, is hopeful that teaming up with city authorities to plant more urban trees can offset some of the damage.

Jules Doret Ndongo, the country’s Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife, this month signed a deal with 15 city councils in 10 regions of the country to plant more city trees and create new parks.

The effort “is a combined forest, floods, drought and water shortage protection effort,” he said.

The government says city councils will receive over 600 million FCFA ($1 million) annually to help curb deforestation.

According to Bruno Mfou’ou Mfou’ou, director of forestry in the Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife, tree planting efforts will target areas particularly suffering flooding or drought.

“Targeting vulnerable areas is critical in the fight against climate disasters,” he said. The city tree project comes on top of a 2017 government project that aims to restore 12 million hectares of deforested land in the country, Mfou’ou Mfou’ou noted.

Source: Reuters

The four-time African Player of the Year met with CAF President Ahmad Ahmad, where he commended the latter on the progressed attained by African football under his watch.

He also had discussions with CAF Deputy General Secretary, Anthony Baffoe, who later took him on a tour of the Secretariat including the recently commissioned state-of-the-art Match Command Centre, which amazed the Cameroonian star.

Eto’o, Africa Cup of Nations winner with Cameroon in 2000 and 2002, was accompanied by the president of the Normalisation Committee of the Cameroon Football Federation, Dieudonne Happi.

Still on the books of Turkish club, Konyaspor, Eto’o remains one of the most celebrated idols in the history of African football, winning over a century of caps with Cameroon.

Source: Ghanaweb

Instead of applauding and celebrating this week’s announcement that Fifa will give each of the five African representatives at this year’s World Cup in Russia an advance of $2 million (R25 million), African football leaders should hang their heads in shame.

The money, according to Confederation of African Football (CAF) president Ahmad Ahmad, is meant to help Nigeria, Senegal, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia “settle beforehand the question of bonuses”. This assistance stems from Ahmad’s initiative that saw CAF give each of the five countries a $2.5 million grant to help them with their preparations.

While the baby-faced Ahmed jumped up and down in unbridled jubilation like a child who has just received an expensive Christmas gift following the announcement this week, it is the reason for this advance that provoked my ire. “To help settle beforehand the question of bonuses,” Ahmad gleefully and glibly said.

Aha!

So following the theatrics that some African countries have performed just before World Cups, it has now become necessary for Fifa to take charge and prevent the shenanigans that have in the past badly affected the image of African football.

In a nutshell, Fifa’s decision means that African football bosses cannot be trusted to get their houses in order. They must be policed like a bunch of delinquent schoolboys, hence the five countries are the only ones of the 32 nations to get an advance.

All the other football federations will get their money at the end of the World Cup. Stories of the shenanigans of African players and officials around the World Cup are well-documented, dating as far back as the 1990 World Cup in Italy.

Then top goalkeeper, Cameroonian Joseph-Antoine Bell – whose nickname was Mandela – was dropped for his then understudy Thomas N’Kono after raising the players’ bonus issue. However, on the field of play, The Indomitable Lions became the first African country to reach the quarter-finals at the world’s biggest sporting spectacle.

In 1994, then Cameroon coach Henri Michel (may his soul rest in peace) was left pulling his hair out after he discovered on arriving in the USA that his Cameroonian team had less than 10 players. Reports were that some of the players were left in Cameroon as people heaved and shoved to get on to a plane, where it was first come, first served.

After the entire squad had finally assembled, they staged a strike about their bonuses. An official had to leave the west African country with a bag full of US dollars, as players would not accept cheques. It was only after receiving their qualification bonuses that the players started training.

Before even departing for the USA, the Cameroonian team’s planned trip to Asia for preparations was scuppered as players arrived at the airport to find that the plane had not been booked and that there were no $20 000 cheques waiting for them, as promised.

The players had demanded that they be paid this amount upfront to leave their families with some spending money during month-long absence from home. Michel had met Cameroon’s prime minister that week and a promise was made that the cheques would be delivered to the players at the airport, before their departure.

They never materialised and the players had to be crammed into a few small yellow taxis that ferried them back to their hotel. In 2014, Cameroon arrived late for the World Cup in Brazil due to pay disputes, Ghana’s government had to fly in $3 million in cash to avert a players’ strike, while Nigeria’s players cancelled a team practice, leading to fears that they might not honour their next game.

Ahmad was correct this week when he said: “Disputes over payments at previous tournaments led to situations that affected badly the image of African football, with a considerable impact on team performances.” However, what he might see as an achievement, I view as a serious indictment on African football leaders.

It shows a high level of irresponsibility and lends itself to the thought that the continent must always go cap in hand and be shown the way by Europeans. The African countries are the only ones receiving this advance and who can guarantee that it will indeed be spent on what it is intended for?

On a different note, as a South African, I cannot help but feel sad that Bafana Bafana are missing out on this event as the $2 million advance from Fifa, the $2.5 million from CAF, the $1.5 million that Fifa gives to all 32 football federations that will be at the World Cup for preparation, plus the $8 million prize money each country receives for participating, means the SA Football Association will lose out on a tidy $14 million (that’s a cool R175 million when converted).

And what about the whopping $38 million the winning nation will receive? Makes you ponder!

Source: Sports 24

Host Cameroon was crowned champions of the Central African Football Federations’ Union (UNIFFAC) after beating DR Congo 1-0 in the final on Thursday (12 April 2018) in Yaounde.

The side guided by Thomas Libiih, a former Cameroonian midfielder, got the only goal courtesy Moctar Oumate in the 36th minute. Well-placed in the defence of the Congolese, Oumate made the most of an assist from Joel Awono Amah, firing past a hapless DR Congo goalkeeper Nsingui Bakutu Nahan.

The Congolese launched onslaughts for the equalizer, but the homers held on to claim victory. At the group stage, DR Congo beat neighbours Congo (3-2), followed by another victory over Central African Republic (1-0), and also Chad (1-0) at the semis.

On the other hand, Cameroon settled for a 1-1 draw with Chad and beat Sao Tome e Principe 2-1 to book their place at the last four, where they edged Congo 1-0.

In the third place, Congo beat Chad 2-0. The tournament served a preparatory test for the teams in the region ahead of the zonal qualifier for the Total U-17 Africa Cup of Nations Tanzania 2019 scheduled for DR Congo in August.

Source: Boxscorenews

Ahmad Ahmad from Madagascar celebrates one year as CAF president Friday having caused a shock last March by ending the 29-year reign of Cameroonian Issa Hayatou.

It has been a hectic time for the previously largely unknown Malagasy with plenty of changes to the African football landscape and numerous meetings with heads of state.

After the increasingly autocratic rule of Hayatou, Ahmad has been more democratic, allowing all stakeholders a chance to air views and contribute toward decision making.

We review the first year in office of Ahmad, highlighting his successes and also challenges that lie ahead.

SUCCESSES

– Morocco hosted two worthwhile symposiums, one looking at all aspects of African football and the other concentrating on the role of women in the sport.

– The Africa Cup of Nations dates were changed from January/February to June/July with effect from 2019, freeing up Europe-based stars reluctant to leave clubs in mid-season.

– CAF Champions League and CAF Confederation Cup seasons changed from February/November to September/May, bringing them in line with most African domestic seasons.

– There may be only two women on the CAF executive – Isha Johansen of Sierra Leone and Lydia Nsekera of Burundi – but the winds of change are gathering strength.

– CAF now pay referees for international assignments instead of host nations or clubs, lessening the risk of pressure being placed on match officials to favour one side.

CHALLENGES

– Cup of Nations hosting uncertainty – 2019 hosts Cameroon are latest country racing against clock – has to end. Set a readiness deadline and stick to it.

– CAF club prizes must increase. South African side SuperSport United lost money last season despite reaching the Confederation Cup final.

– The CAF Super Cup match in which the Champions League winners host the Confederation Cup title-holders is grossly unfair and should become a two-leg affair.

– More former stars are getting CAF positions, but only one, 1988 African Footballer of the Year Kalusha Bwalya of Zambia, is part of the executive.

– Many pre-match “dirty tricks”, especially concerning training facilities, could be avoided if the neutral, well-renumerated match commissioners became more involved.

Source:Citizentv.co.ke