Morocco last week took a number of African journalists on a “media tour” to showcase its infrastructure and organizational capabilities ahead of the Confederation of African Football’s (CAF) decision regarding which country will host the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON).
The tour mainly helped to show that Morocco meets all CAF requirements in terms of stadiums, training grounds, accommodation and health infrastructure to host African football’s most prestigious tournament, Morocco’s press agency reported on February 10, citing the Malawian newspaper “The Nation.”
With Morocco having been in the race to organize the 2026 World Cup and having recently organized the FIFA Club World Cup, the report referred to several experts as stressing that the North African country would be a capable and ideal AFCON host.
CAF is still deliberating over who will host the 2025 AFCON after it declared Guinea as not ready or fit to do so. The results were supposed to be displayed on February 10, but the CAF president, Patrice Motsepe, has postponed the event to an unspecified date.
Competing for the hosting rights are Morocco, Algeria, Zambia, and Nigeria-Benin (joint bid). But since the 2022 AFCON was played in Cameroon and the 2024 iteration of the continental tournament is scheduled to be played in Cote d’Ivoire, CAF is likely to organize the tournament in a North African country.
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Considered to be the two favourites, Morocco and Algeria have recently been putting their infrastructure and organizational potential on display in a bid to convince CAF to grant them the hosting rights for the 2025 AFCON.
For Morocco, the successful organization of this year’s FIFA Club World Cup in Rabat and Tangier provided further, strong evidence that the country has the required infrastructure and organizational capabilities to host the continental footballing showpiece.
“If we did not have full trust in Morocco, we would not be here today to organize the Club World Cup,” FIFA President Gianni Infantino highlighted earlier this month while visiting the North African kingdom, further boosting the country’s AFCON bid.
Echoing Infantino’s sentiments, many observers have said over the past weeks that Morocco’s enormous investments in upgrading its infrastructure since 2014 have made the North African country a strong candidate to host both global and continental sporting events.
One of the Moroccan venues set to host AFCON games is Agadir stadium, which comprises 46.000 seats. The other stadiums are in Tangier, Rabat, Casablanca, Marrakech, and Fez — and each of these stadiums’ seating capacity exceeds 45.000.