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Caf offer more time for countries make good on stadium
Govt Call. Vipers publicist Wasike.
What you need to know:
- The Cranes were due to travel to Kenya for their opening qualifiers early next month before hosting Mali at St Mary’s Kitende but those games will now happen from September.
Uganda and some other African countries have been allowed more time to meet minimum standards of playing their Fifa Qatar 2022 World Cup qualifying at home matches after world soccer body, Fifa, pushed ahead June ties.
The Cranes were due to travel to Kenya for their opening qualifiers early next month before hosting Mali at St Mary’s Kitende but those games will now happen from September.
“Taking into consideration the current disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and the need to ensure optimal playing conditions for all teams,” Fifa posted on their website.
“It has been decided to postpone the African qualifiers for the Fifa World Cup Qatar 2022 that were due to be played in June 2021.”
Scraped through
The qualifiers will now take place in the windows of September, October and November 2021, and March 2022.
Caf will be “reassessing its protocols and processes to enhance the implementation of Covid-related protocols, including specifically focusing on pre-match testing which had been the source of some challenges in previous windows.”
Ten nations out of the 40, including Uganda, taking part in the qualifying campaign faced the prospect of ‘hosting’ matches outside their borders.
But Caf last week released a list of countries that showed some, like Uganda, Mali and Senegal among others, that just scraped through on a provisional basis for - until lately - June qualifiers.
With Nelson Mandela Namboole Stadium long suspended, Uganda had only St Mary’s left.
Fully functional access roads - the Kitende facility has only one - was one of the conditions Caf and Fifa set before the stadium was given a provisional lift.
Lawrence Mulindwa, the proprietor of Vipers and the stadium, is rallying government to come in and help with the access roads.
“That is what we are pushing for now,” said Abdu Wasike, the Vipers spokesperson. On their part, Fufa said yesterday they were still waiting for official details on Caf ruling on Kitende.
“And no,” said Fufa deputy CEO in charge of football, Decolas Kiiza, who is part of the FA stadium inspection team, “We have not had any discussions with the government regarding access roads at Kitende.”
