Omar Khyari, Special Advisor to the president of the Royal Morocco Football Federation, says Morocco is ready to host the rest of the continent as the country ramps up its bid to host the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon).
The hosting right is up for grabs once more following the decision of the Confederation of African Football (Caf) to strip Guinea because they would not be ready for the tournament when the time was due.
Morocco have made their intentions clear to the continental football governing body to host the flagship showpiece having submitted a bid already.
The Maghreb has continuously shown it is more than capable of hosting the tournament. Just a couple of months ago, Morocco successfully hosted the Club World Cup which Spanish giants Real Madrid emerged as the eventual winners.
With six of their numerous stadiums homologated by Caf, Morocco has consistently opened its doors to sister countries that haven’t been able to meet up with the licensing standards.
And the March Internationals was just one of the numerous instances that Morocco played home to 14 other countries for this installment of the Afcon 2023 qualifiers.
“For us, we are already ready to organize main football events like Afcon,” Omar told Footy-Ghana.com in an exclusive interview.
“In this past week, we had about 14 African countries playing more than 20 games in 6 stadiums at the same time in the country. Some of these games were 2023 Afcon qualifiers and others too being the U-23 Afcon qualifiers.
“This is possible because we have stadiums, training facilities, and hotels that meet both Fifa and Caf standards,” he added.
The 2022 World Cup semifinalists have already joined Spain and Portugal’s bid for the 2030 Fifa World Cup and are hopeful of being lucky having lost out previously on five World Cup bids amongst which include the 2010 and 2026 World Cup bids.
Official: Morocco joins Spain-Portugal 2030 Fifa World Cup bid