Zim misses out on hosting 2015 Afcon

October 4, 2010

Newsday

4 October 2010

By Wellington Toni

Zimbabwe is no longer in the running to host the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations finals after missing out the deadline set by the Confederation of African Football (Caf).

The deadline was Thursday at midnight and on Saturday Caf announced that only three countries — South Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Morocco — had bid to host the 2015 and 2017 editions.

“The Caf administration has registered the following three (3) applications from its Member Associations: RD Congo, Morocco and South Africa.”

The hosting rights for the 30th and 31st editions of the continent’s showpiece football event will be determined by the Caf executive committee at a meeting to be decided in 2011.

Gabon and Equatorial Guinea will jointly host the 2012 edition and Libya in 2013 as holding of the competition moves into odd years.

That was before a decision to change the calendar to odd years to avoid it running in the same year as the World Cup was made.

Two weeks ago, Zifa president Cuthbert Dube said they would bid for the 2015 edition, but that dream has now been shattered.

Dube was actually the chairman of the 2010 Afcon bid committee from 2005 to 2006. In fact, in his campaign manifesto, Dube said it was his dream to host Caf and Fifa competitions in a bid to “rebrand and profile the association and Zimbabwe in general”.

Zimbabwe controversially lost the 2000 hosting bid to Nigeria and Ghana when Africa’s football governing body, Caf, having already confirmed the southern African country as the hosts, said it was not convinced the stadiums would be ready in time.

Zimbabwe later bid for the 2004 finals and lost to Tunisia. Then Zifa chairman Wellington Nyatanga said last September that Zimbabwe had submitted its bid for 2014.

Earlier this month, Education, Sport and Culture minister David Coltart announced that the government should look at building two stadiums for the hosting of the 2017 tournament.

“As government we believe we should  facilitate the hosting of the 2017 Nations Cup event,” said Coltart.