By Kuvee Kangueehi
WINDHOEK The Namibian Bid to host the 2010 African Nations Cup failed at the first hurdle when Namibia was not even shortlisted on Sunday in Cairo, Egypt. The Confederation of African Football (CAF) named Libya, Angola, Nigeria and a joint bid from Gabon and Equatorial Guinea on its shortlist to host the 2010 Nations Cup. CAF heard from a total of eight bids at its headquarters in Egypt on Sunday and eventually rejected those from Mozambique, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Senegal. The bad news from the northern Africa country filtered though late Sunday afternoon. Angola, Equatorial Guinea-Gabon (joint bid), Libya and Nigeria were shortlisted by the CAF Executive Committee for CAN 2010 for the second phase. CAF 1st Vice-President General Seyi Memene made the announcement on Sunday for successful countries selected to the second bidding step to host the African Cup Nations 2010 after CAF’s Executive Committee’s deliberations at its headquarters in Cairo.
The countries, besides Namibia, which were not pre-selected for the second round were Mozambique, Senegal and Zimbabwe. The bidding countries presented their dossier before the CAF Executive Committee members and Technical Evaluation Committee, which include Mr Danny Jordan (South Africa) and Tarek Boucha-maoui (Tunisia). The Technical Evaluation Committee presented its reports to the CAF Executive Committee before its final deliberations. CAF 1st Vice-President General Seyi Memene expressed CAF’s satisfaction: “We are profoundly impressed with the commitments shown by all the nine bidding countries, the political backing and football family support, but the CAF Executive Committee can only select four based on the primary criteria set up by the African football supreme body which are distribution of final previous competitions, linguistics considerations in the previous finals, football aspects, government guarantees, respect of terms of reference of candidatures and organisational abilities.” Both Libya and Nigeria have hosted the African Cup of Nations in the past, while it would be a first for Angola as well as Gabon and Equatorial Guinea. Inspectors from CAF will now visit all four of the shortlisted nations in between July and August this year. During the months of July and August 2006, an inspection team will be visiting the remaining countries and will provide a detailed report on each country using CAF terms of reference such as, security, transport and communications, before making the final selection for the country to host the African Nations Cup 2010, which will be done by the CAF Executive Committee during its meeting in September 2006. The inspectors will provide a detailed report on each country on such things as stadiums, security, transport and communications. The eventual hosts for the 2010 Nations Cup will be made by the CAF executive committee at its meeting in September 2006
Meanwhile, CAF has also announced that Nigeria will be hosting this year’s African Women’s Championship after the earlier withdrawal of Gabon. – Additional reporting CAF website