CAN 2019, Egypt officially nominated as host.

This is a follow up to two of my previous posts which were centered on the controversies trailing the hosting of CAN 2019.

It was a common knowledge at a point that Cameroon was billed to be the host country for the 2019 edition of African Cup of Nations until that dream was cut short when CAF suddenly withdrew the carpet under Cameroons foot by an official announcement, citing delays in infrastructural upgrades and constructions. Following that, Morocco showed it interest by putting forward a bid to host the tournament in its kingdom.

However, as the whole of Africa was getting used to the idea that CAF was going to announce Morocco a as its choice. Suddenly and without preamble, the football governing body received a rude shock, for the Moroccan minister of information announced that they have withdrawn their candidacy as bidders to host the tournament. Egypt who is a member of the north African football block was rumored to have been responsible for the sudden Tunisian backtracking.

While CAF was appearing to be confused and no different from a destitute organization, little did it know that Egypt was preparing the formalization of putting forward its bid to indicate its interest for host the CAN 2019 tournament.

"The Egyptian Football Federation (EFA) has officially applied to host the CAN 2019, which is scheduled for June and was to be organized by Cameroon, which was not ready to host it," the EFA writes. A press release on its official Twitter and Facebook accounts.

It is no surprise that CAF gave priority to Egypt, Egypt being among the countries that keenly contested for the 2026 FIFA world cup eventually lost out to the trio USA, Mexico and Canada. Also, it had already hosted the tournament 4 times, the last was in 2006. Ordinarily, Egypt shouldn’t have muscled morocco out of the candidacy being a member of the same football block and have hosted the tournament several times. However, i think there must be some mutual understanding between the two north African giants which may not be far from the fact that Egypt needed to be compensated, having lost the bid to host the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

Just as i point out on the other post, this may still not be the final bus stop for our destitute CAF, perhaps another country in Africa with bigger a clout such as South Africa will not muscle Egypt out of the bid as it did Morocco. This is so because the birds are singing that there still remain potential candidates interested in the bid and may put forward their interest before the final date of submission which is on 25th December, 2018.

The next stage will be presentation of a short list of candidates by CAF for final decision on the 9th of January, 2019. The tournament proper is scheduled to kick off from June 15th, to July 13th, 2019 with 24 teams competing for the first time in the tournament.

I sincerely hope that Egypt will be the final destination for CAN 2019; otherwise the whole process will become a child’s play and too embarrassing for CAF and we the teeming football fans in Africa.

ALL IMAGES USED ARE GOOGLE SOURCED.

Thank you for stopping by. Sincerely @izge.