http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/soccer/news/2002/08/27/africa_rdp The host for the 2006 African Nations Cup finals will be decided by CAF in October. The four finalists are Egypt, Liberia, Algeria and Ivory Coast. The heavy favorite has to be Egypt, if by process of elimination. Surely if there's any sanity in CAF headquarters in Cairo, Liberia and Algeria must have no chance, given that the former is in full fledged civil war and the latter is a low-level civil war/terrorist bombings situation. Ivory Coast has had problems since the installation of a democratic civilian government but the recent incorporation of a main opposition party into a national unity government should stablize things. I give Ivory Coast an outside chance because with Tunisia hosting CAN 2004, CAF might not want to give consecutive tournaments to the same region. (Although West Africa hosted three consecutive CANs in 1998, 2000 and 2002, the 2000 edition was originally awarded to Zimbabwe before Bob Mugabe commenced destroying the country).
I thought it was Libya? instead of Liberia..they were asking Egypt to co-host with them? I hope it goes to the Ivory Coast (just like to see it moved around as both BF and Mali were good tournaments)..
According to CAFonline, it looks like you are right and CNNSI is wrong. Libya is indeed bidding for CAN 2006. CAF doesn't indicate anything about a joint bid, so for now anyways, its four separate bids. Still, I suspect Libya is as unlikely to get it as Liberia.
I know hindsite is 20/20, but man has the situation changed in Cote d'Ivoire since you made this post. The country is falling apart and there seems to be no chance that any tournament will be held there in the near future. A shame really, Cote d'Ivoire had been a bright spot in Africa and I would have voted for it were it not for the current crisis there.
Re: Re: CAN 2006 host to be decided in October Well, sadly I'm not totally shocked by what's happening there (I did allude to some of the stuff underpinning it). A few years ago, the idiotic politicians opened up a pandora's box on a concept called Ivoirité, which was really an appeal to pure ethnic xenophobia. What I'd meant was that Ivory Coast was the only country listed besides Egypt that had the infrastructural capacity to host a CAN.