Guinea will host the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations instead of the 2023 edition, according to the Confederation of African Football (Caf) president Ahmad.
Speaking on a visit to Guinea on Sunday when he was joined by Fifa president Gianni Infantino, Ahmad said Guinea’s President Alpha Condé had agreed to a delay in hosting the tournament.
Ahmad told reporters it is a similar situation to Cameroon, who will stage the 2021 finals after being stripped of hosting the 2019 Nations Cup in November.
The Guinea Football Federation (Feguifoot) statement comes just a few days after its president Antonio Souare told BBC Sport they had not been “notified, neither by a letter or a decree” about the proposed delay in hosting.
In 2014, Caf awarded Nations Cup hosting rights to Cameroon (2019), Ivory Coast (2021) and Guinea (2023).
After the reported changes to the schedule, Ivory Coast – which is now set to host in 2023 – lodged an appeal with the Court of Arbitration for Sport against the Caf decision to hand the 2021 tournament to Cameroon.
On 9 January, Caf is set to announce who will host this year’s finals – with both Egypt and South Africa having made bids to replace Cameroon.
Speaking to BBC Sport before Sunday’s visit by Ahmad, Souare also questioned whether African countries will be able to single-handedly host the expanded Nations Cup, which moved from 16 teams to 24 in 2017, in future.
“To go from four to six stadiums, all of a sudden, for one country do we maybe have to do co-hosting?” he added.
“I’m saying this as an African football leader and administrator, after thinking about it. And I’m still thinking about it.
“It’s not just the six stadiums, we have to build hotels – 2-3 star hotels to lodge the public that come, but for the teams you need 4-5 star hotels.
“Then you also have the hospitals, telecommunications, roads, airlines. It’s all this. There are many things.
“Would co-hosting, like we have have seen between Gabon and Equatorial Guinea, be a possible fallback solution?”
The Nations Cup has been co-hosted twice before, by Gabon and Equatorial Guinea in 2012 and by Ghana and Nigeria in 2000.
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Source: BBC
