The Confederation of African Football stated early Saturday morning that Guinea’s right to host the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations finals has been revoked and bidding for the event will be reopened.
A meeting between the interim president of Guinea, Colonel Mamady Doumbouya, and the president of African football’s governing body, Patrice Motsepe, took place in Conakry on Friday to discuss Guinea’s withdrawal after the country, one of the poorest on the continent, said it wasn’t prepared to host the 24-nation contest.
The CAF executive committee will meet on Saturday in Algiers and decide whether to restart the bidding process for the 2025 tournament, according to a CAF statement.
“I visited Guinea out of respect to the people of Guinea to discuss CAF’s willingness to advise and work together with the football stakeholders to construct and build football infrastructure and facilities in this country, in the light of the decision by CAF not to proceed with the AFCON 2025 in Guinea,” Motsepe said in a statement.
The Ivory Coast was scheduled to host the next tournament in the middle of 2023, however, this has been pushed back to early 2024 owing to weather concerns in the area.
With the increase of the Cup of Nations finals to 24 teams in 2019, it was inevitable that Guinea’s limited infrastructure would be taxed, thus the decision is not unexpected.
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The regional group gave Guinea until October 22 to provide a “reasonable” plan or risk more penalties in July.
