Algeria Considers Withdrawing CAN 2025 Bid as CAF Decision Nears

CAF will announce the host country for CAN 2025 in a few days. "We will meet again in Cairo on Wednesday, September 27, 2023 to discuss and make decisions regarding the countries that will be awarded the TotalEnergies CAN 2025 and CAN-2027," said Patrice Motsepe, president of the African football governing body, in a statement published on the organization’s website, following the meeting of its Executive Committee in the Egyptian capital. Morocco, Algeria, Morocco, Zambia and the Nigeria-Benin duo are the candidates vying to host the organization of CAN 2025.

Meanwhile, BeIN Sport Qatari Group sports commentator Hafid Derradji has made an "urgent" suggestion to the new president of the Algerian Football Federation (FAF) Walid Sadi. He called on him to withdraw Algeria’s bid to host CAN 2025 as well as that of 2027. "Algeria’s withdrawal of its bid would avoid embarrassment for CAF, which would have already decided," estimates Hafid Derradji in his weekly column published on the Algérie Maintenant website.

According to him, the bids to host CAN 2025, 2027 and even 2029 are definitively "closed" in favor of Morocco, Senegal, Benin and Nigeria, "despite Algeria’s efforts in building new infrastructure and rehabilitating existing ones." He then urges Walid Sadi to "focus first on the reorganization and restoration of order within the FAF".