The head of the African soccer confederation has expressed satisfaction with Cameroon’s preparations to host next year’s African Cup of Nations, a statement at odds with the body’s position last week when it declined to back the country.

Confederation of African Football president Ahmad said Tuesday on a visit to Cameroon that CAF had “never thought of” and “never considered” dropping Cameroon as host. “It is left to Cameroon to tell us,” said Ahmad, who is from Madagascar and goes by one name. “We are not the ones organizing (the competition). It is Cameroon that is hosting the competition.

“It’s only Cameroon that can say tomorrow that ‘we are ready or give us more time we are not ready.’ It depends on Cameroon, not CAF.”

Ahmad’s position that CAF had no problem with Cameroon’s preparations contradicted statements made by the confederation after a two-day executive committee meeting last week. Then, CAF declined to confirm Cameroon as host for the tournament next June and July and instead delayed a decision until the end of next month and after at least two more inspection visits.

Cameroon has been criticized for serious delays with stadiums and other infrastructure and is in the midst of a violent separatist rebellion in the west, where two tournament host cities are located. CAF would first send a joint CAF-FIFA team to assess the security situation this month, it said, and then inspect infrastructure before deciding if Cameroon can hold Africa’s top soccer tournament.

Ahmad’s visit to Cameroon this week was also contrary to what CAF said last week, when it decided to hold off any inspection visits until after the Cameroonian presidential elections, which take place on Sunday. President Paul Biya is seeking another term to extend his 36-year rule in Cameroon.

That election could be a catalyst for more violence in the southwestern and northwestern regions, where English-speaking separatists have been engaged in bloody fighting with government forces since late 2016. Cameroon is about 80 percent French-speaking.

Ahmad said he had decided to visit Cameroon on the invitation of former Cameroon striker Samuel Eto’o. “It is thanks to him that this visit has been organized in order to clear the air on every front,” Ahmad said.

CAF has no “Plan B” for the tournament, Ahmad said, a tournament which will be the first African Cup to be increased from 16 to 24 teams, placing additional pressure on Cameroon’s creaking infrastructure. Despite Ahmad dismissing the notion of a “Plan B,” Morocco has been mentioned as a possible replacement host.

If Morocco did stand in, it would be the fourth straight African Cup to be moved from its original host country. South Africa stepped in for Libya in 2013, the tournament was switched from Morocco to Equatorial Guinea in 2015, and Libya again backed out of its hosting last year, leaving Gabon to host at the last minute. Cameroon’s team is the African champion and was hoping to defend its title on home soil.

Source: News Observer

Confederation of African Football chief Ahmad Ahmad made a surprise visit on Tuesday to Cameroon, the troubled host of the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations. Ahmad Ahmad reportedly told the world that his meeting with President Biya was organized by Cameroonian football legend, Samuel Eto’o.

The Madagascan met the 85 year-old Paul Biya, whose government is working to convince CAF it will be ready to host the continental festival of football despite doubts over the readiness and capacity of its stadiums.

Ahmad’s visit is expected to delay a planned election campaign visit by Biya to the town of Buea, which has been on the frontline of separatist violence by English-speaking fighters.

Officials had earlier suggested that he could travel to Buea as soon as Tuesday, but a presidency source said the trip was “unconfirmed”.

There are daily clashes between separatists and the army in the anglophone northwest and southwest regions, and security has been a major campaign issue ahead of Sunday’s presidential polls. Members of the nascent insurgency have threatened to disrupt the elections.

Towns in the anglophone regions were subject to a curfew ahead of the first anniversary of the separatists’ symbolic declaration of independence on Monday. On Sunday eight candidates will face off against Biya, 85, who is seeking a seventh term in power.

Camcordnews with files from AFP

A top Cameroon football official told AFP on Sunday his nation “will be ready” to host next year’s Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON), even though the final decision has been delayed.

Cameroon’s hosting of African football’s showpiece event has been in jeopardy for months since the decision to increase the tournament from 16 to 24 teams.

The Confederation of African Football (CAF) had been expected to confirm Cameroon as host on Friday at their meeting in Sharm el Sheikh, but instead postponed a vote until the end of November.

It said there had been a “big delay in the building of infrastructure” in Cameroon. But Dieudonne Happi, the interim head of the west African country’s crisis-hit football federation, said: “In the current state of things, I can tell you bluntly and without any risk of being wrong that Cameroon will be ready.

“The delay will be made up,” said Happi, the chairman of the Cameroonian federation’s normalisation committee, adding that the country will be ready “no later than December 31”, the deadline set by CAF in March.

An inspection committee from CAF and world football’s governing body FIFA will visit Cameroon in October to assess preparations.

The Cameroonian league is currently suspended because of funding issues and the federation is without a president.

Morocco, which unsuccessfully bid to host the 2026 World Cup, has lobbied to replace Cameroon as hosts.

“We are obviously ready to organise a major African event,” said Hamza El Hajoui, the president of the Moroccan football federation, adding that his country was “respectful” of both the CAF process and “the candidacy of a friendly country that is Cameroon.”

Ahmad Ahmad, the CAF president, denied that his organisation had already decided to take the tournament away from Cameroon.

“CAF has not yet taken any decision to the contrary… that the Cup of Nations will be origanized in Cameroon,” he told a press conference.

The tournament will take place on June 15-July 13. The tournament used to be in January, forcing European clubs to release their players in the middle of the season.

AFP

Fighting between separatists and government forces, along with concerns its stadiums won’t be ready, have left Cameroon facing the possibility Saturday of being stripped of its hosting of next year’s African Cup of Nations soccer tournament.

Tournament organizer the Confederation of African Football declined to back the country as host after a two-day meeting of its executive committee in Egypt. Instead, CAF said it was delaying a decision on Cameroon’s staging of the continent’s top soccer event until the end of November, and after two more inspection visits.

That will be just over six months before the African Cup kicks off. Morocco is a possible replacement host for the tournament in June and July if Cameroon, which was chosen in 2014, is dropped. The first inspection visit next month will be by a joint CAF-FIFA delegation to assess the security situation in the western part of Cameroon, where bloody fighting between the government and English-speaking separatists started in late 2016 and has escalated this year.

That visit by CAF and security experts from world body FIFA will come after Cameroon’s Oct. 7 presidential election, when the violence could come to a head.

“We have to wait (to see) what is going to happen with the elections,” CAF deputy secretary general Anthony Baffoe said in an interview with the BBC. “That is why also we said after the elections we do the next inspection visit.

“Then I think you can have a bit more feeling about the political situation and what is going on.”

There has been “horrific escalation of violence” in Cameroon’s southwest and northwest, Amnesty International said this month, citing a graphic video of a beheaded security officer.

Two cities due to host African Cup games, Limbe and Bafoussam, are deep in those regions where the fighting is.

Claiming they are being marginalized in the largely French-speaking country, the English-speaking, or Anglophone, separatists have vowed to disrupt the presidential election and also the African Cup if it goes ahead in Cameroon next summer.

In a thinly-veiled threat, they said soccer players, officials and fans may not be safe.

“We shall not be able to guarantee the security of football players, technical staffs, members of official delegations and thousands of soccer lovers from across the world,” some separatist groups said in a letter they claim to have sent to CAF in August.

If Cameroon is retained as host, it’s possible that some of Africa’s biggest soccer stars who feature for top European clubs would decline to go and play in a region where people are being shot and killed, bridges are being blown up and buildings torched. Up to 400 civilians have died in the violence, Amnesty said, and the killing, looting and burning has sent nearly 200,000 fleeing.

The security concern has now overtaken serious delays with stadiums and related tournament infrastructure as Cameroon’s No. 1 problem.

The readiness of the country’s six stadiums had already been a major headache for CAF before the upsurge in deadly violence.

Cameroon’s team is the African champion and was hoping to defend its title at home.

The country’s tournament preparations were also complicated when CAF expanded the tournament from 16 to 24 teams after the country was chosen as host. That increased pressure on the struggling infrastructure, requiring six stadiums and not just four like the previous two versions of the African Cup in Gabon and Equatorial Guinea.

“Definitely six venues is not easy in Africa,” Baffoe said in the BBC interview.

CAF said its most recent report on Cameroon’s preparations “revealed a significant delay as far as the delivery of infrastructures is concerned.”

The Cup of Nations is Africa’s showcase soccer tournament — probably its biggest sports event — but it’s also been highly problematic for CAF in recent years.

South Africa took on the 2013 version after war-torn Libya admitted it couldn’t host. Morocco was stripped as the 2015 host because of plans it was proposing to stop fans traveling from regions affected by that year’s Ebola outbreak. Libya again withdrew as host two years ago, sending the African Cup back to Gabon for the second time in five years.

Held every two years, the African Cup in Ivory Coast in 2021 is also already a cause for concern, CAF said Saturday.

“Of the six stadiums required for the competition, four are to be built and two are undergoing major renovations,” CAF said. “For accommodation, three out of five cities do not have the required infrastructure.”

Source: Fox News