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The Confederation of African Football has unveiled the list of countries that do not have an approved stadium. These nations will have to find agreements with other federations in order to play the first two rounds of the 2023 AFCON qualifiers away from home.
15 out of 54, the number speaks for itself. Of the 54 member associations of the Confederation of African Football, 15 do not currently have a single stadium that meets CAF standards. As a result, as announced by the pan-African body, these countries will not be able to host on their soil the matches of the group phase of the 2023 AFCON qualifiers. They will be forced to play their matches "at home" in another country. And this at least for the first two days of the qualifiers which will take place in June.
This will be particularly the case of Burkina Faso. The Stallions thought they would be able to host Cape Verde at the Stade du 4 Août, but renovations have taken longer than expected. The stadium will not be ready before September and it is therefore in Morocco that Burkina Faso has found a place to play. The same goes for Liberia, who found an agreement with the Moroccan Football Federation to play their matches in Morocco. Except that this decision creates controversy on the side of South Africa which denounces a lack of sporting equity. The three nations are in the same group and Bafana Bafana believe that the Moroccans would have a clear advantage, especially in terms of recovery since they will save travel.
Other nations such as the Central African Republic, Niger and Gambia also find themselves without a single approved stadium on their territory and have had to work hard to find alternative solutions. Niger will relocate the reception of its opponents in Benin. Gambia has received the green light from Senegal to host its opponents at the Stade Lat-Dior in Thies. Great nation of the continent, Ghana has avoided that the knife falls by seeing its stadium in Cape Coast be approved by the emissaries of CAF. The same goes for Côte d'Ivoire, whose new stadium in Yamoussoukro received a temporary approval, while the improvements requested by CAF are fully implemented.
Countries without an approved stadium: Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Eswatini, Gambia, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Namibia, Niger, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Uganda and Zimbabwe.
