SA Lose Out To Morocco Again

This follows the confirmation of the Confederation of Africa Football’s (CAF) Executive Committee decision that Morocco was the only country to have submitted the bid to host the tournament, and they would be hosting the second edition of the Women’s Champions League between October and November.

Just less than a week after CAF President Patrice Motsepe had defended his organisation’s decisions to take tournaments to Morocco, following a loud outcry particularly in Egypt after the 10-times African champions Al Ahly were forced to go and play the one-legged CAF Champions League final against newly-crowned champions Wydad Casablanca inside their own backyard at the Mohammed V Stadium in Casablanca recently.

iDiski Times has it on good authority that the South African Football Association (SAFA) had shown a strong interest to bid for the CAF Women’s Champions League but it is still not clear if they managed to submit an official bid to Cairo.

When addressing the matter of the CAFCL, Motsepe had made it clear that SA had shown an interest to stage the Ahly and Wydad game but failed to guarantee government support.

“And then you have countries that have to compete, South Africa did compete but you can’t compete without government support,” said Motsepe last week.

“So, SAFA puts a letter, but there’s no government support. So, at the end of the day, only two countries, Morocco and Senegal complied with the conditions.”

But the Deputy Director General at the Department of Sports, Arts and Culture Sumaya Khan said for this CAF Women’s Champions League, they had not received anything from the federation (SAFA) asking for their permission to host this tournament.

“I cannot recall seeing any of the former applications coming through,” Khan said.

“So yes, I can’t tell you now that we were really approached but I haven’t seen any formal application.

“We do not have a moratorium on hosting international events, we have been approached by other codes of sport and the Minister has been considering them. So we do not have a moratorium now that the pandemic is over.

“We do not have any regulations. And it’s part of our economic recovery response.”

SAFA were not available at the time of going to print, to respond to these matters, but iDiski Times has learnt from reliable sources that they did meet with government about the hosting of this tournament, including Minister Nathi Mthethwa himself.