The Ghana Football Association says it is working with the Ministry of Youth and Sports and the National Sports Authority (NSA) to ensure the country gets a venue approved by CAF to host international matches.
Ghana currently has no approved venue on CAF’s list to host a game after the Baba Yara Sports Stadium was rejected by the continent’s governing football body for failing to meet the requirements.
The Baba Yara Sports Stadium was given a one-match approval by CAF to host the 2022 World Cup playoff against Nigeria in March.
CAF has revoked the one-match provisional License that was issued for the Baba Yara Stadium after the game.After several appeals by the Ghana Football Association and inspections, CAF issued a conditional Licence that gave Ghana the opportunity to host the first leg in Kumasi after the Cape Coast stadium was rejected.‘’We are at a very crucial stage as this issue keeps coming back. The last thing we want to see is to allow CAF to determine where we play our home match’’ Prosper Harrison Addo (Esq.) told www.ghanafa.org.
‘’The Baba Yara stadium is one historic stadium where the various national teams have chalked incredible success in our football history and so we can’t afford to allow this to happen to us. We are having a thorough discussion with the National Sports Authority (NSA) with the Ministry of Youth and Sports providing excellent leadership to ensure that the various conditions are met as quickly as we can.
‘’The game against Nigeria was a huge success so it is our responsibility to build on it in subsequent matches but before then we all need to put our shoulders to the wheel to get the venue approved for our matches’’ he added.
It will be recalled that the Confederation of African Football issued a letter to the GFA announcing their decision to automatically remove the Baba Yara stadium from the list of CAF approved stadiums for Senior Category “A” matches.
‘’The Baba Yara stadium was approved under the condition that specific points were to be corrected in the stadium, based on the report received from the CAF inspector that was onsite, we regret to inform you that the improvements made are still not up to the standards required by CAF to host Senior International A matches.
Unfortunately, the level of implementation of all the CAF remarks in the stadium were not satisfactory, including the quality of the equipment’s and materials used in the different functional areas in the stadium’’ the CAF statement read.
