Guinea will host the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations instead of the 2023 edition, according to the Confederation of African Football (Caf) president Ahmad Ahmed.
Speaking on a visit to Guinea on Sunday, Ahmed was joined by Fifa president Gianni Infantino.
Ahmad said Guinea’s President Alpha Condé had agreed to a delay in hosting the tournament. He also told reporters that 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 said they had not been “notified, neither by a letter or a decree” about the proposed delay in hosting.
Speaking 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.
