SA wants to host 2019 Afcon

AFRICAN BODY HAS BEEN INFORMED OF INTEREST IN STAGING CONTINENTAL EVENT Safa president says country has infrastructure in place from 2010 World Cup.

South African Football Association (Safa) president Danny Jordaan has confirmed they have sent a letter to the Confederation of African Football (Caf), expressing their interest in hosting the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon), while also revealing their interest in hosting another major football event.

Jordaan believes getting the South African government behind a bid is “not an issue”.

Safa, meanwhile, have also communicated their interest with Fifa about hosting the 2023 Fifa Women’s World Cup, with Jordaan set to meet Fifa president Gianni Infantino in France this weekend.

Caf are looking for a new host for the Afcon finals after stripping Cameroon of the event, scheduled to take place in June. The continent’s footballing authority had already asked Safa to consider hosting, with a decision that Safa wanted to bid taken at last weekend’s annual general meeting. Safa have now followed that up with an official letter.

“We submitted our letter to express our interest to Caf and they must now tell us what the requirements are,” Jordaan said yesterday.

“They said a decision [on who will host] will be taken before the end of December.”

Jordaan said Safa had already communicated with government and that they were preparing a submission to make to the department of sport, though he added that they could not make any presentation until Caf had got back to them.

“We cannot go to government and they say ‘what are your requirements?’ and we say ‘we are still waiting on Caf’,” added the Safa president.

Jordaan, however, indicated that he didn’t believe persuading the government was a problem and argued that the cost of hosting the competition would not be too high.

“I think that is not an issue for us, because for any major event, your major cost is your infrastructure – stadiums, training venues, roads, airports, media infrastructure, lights in the [stadiums], IT infrastructure.

“Our stadiums hosted a World Cup [in 2010], the highest level of requirement for any event in the world and we delivered 10 World Cup [stadiums]. Now we only need six [for the Afcon]. So we will not spend a penny on infrastructure, we will not put a brick in, everything is in place.

“You have infrastructure cost, then you have operational cost, we have to discuss that with Caf, because Caf gets sponsorship revenue and shares that with the organising committee.”

With regard to the 2023 Fifa Women’s World Cup, Jordaan said SA had every chance of mounting a successful bid to get the competition to Africa for the first time. –