Guinea will not host the African Cup of Nations (CAN) in 2025. The president of the Confederation of African Football (CAF), the South African Patrice Motsepe, made the trip to Conakry on Friday, September 30, to inform the ruling junta of a decision which, he later told the press, dates back to July.
“Tomorrow, we will ask CAF to receive new applications because in the current state, the infrastructures and equipment are not adapted or ready for CAF to accommodate [la CAN] in 2025 in Guinea », did he declare. CAF meets its executive committee on Saturday.
This is a new setback for the queen competition on the continent. In 2014, CAF awarded the next three editions of the CAN at the same time: 2019 in Cameroon, 2021 in Côte d’Ivoire and 2023 in Guinea. After Cameroon’s withdrawal in favor of Egypt in 2019, CAF had shifted the calendar, awarding the 2021 edition to Cameroon, and that of 2023 to Côte d’Ivoire. Guinea had agreed to organize the 2025 edition.
But it is also a severe blow to Guinea. Colonel Mamady Doumbouya, who came to power by force in September 2021, had expressed his firm intention to honor the appointment. The doubt, however, was never dispelled. Organizing this event was shaping up to be a major challenge for one of the poorest countries on the planet, which is sorely lacking in infrastructure for this type of competition, whether in terms of sports equipment or transport.
A subject of “national and priority interest”
Guinea has a recent stadium in the capital and another more dilapidated one likely to host such an event, but the interior of the country has none and construction work has barely begun.
Colonel Doumbouya had named a new organizing committee in March, ousting the old team, one of whose members publicly expressed his doubts as to the feasibility of the project. At the end of August, a decree declaring the organization of CAN 2025 “of national and priority interest”. It was the day before the arrival of a CAF assessment mission.
At the time, there were already reports of a decision taken by CAF in July to withdraw the organization from Guinea. The reasons why the doubt was not cleared until Friday are unclear.
According to the Guinean Minister of Sports, Lansana Béa Diallo, the CAF mission that came in early September had suggested the possibility of a postponement to 2026 or 2027. But Colonel Doumbouya had ruled out this hypothesis and had promised that the competition takes place in Guinea in 2025, he said.
“CAN-2025, which had been awarded to Guinea, we are not ready [à l’accueillir] at the moment in Guinea, and we need to reopen this process”, Mr. Motsepe said on Friday. The work begun by Guinea should encourage it to apply for the organization of competitions, he added without specifying which events he was referring to.
