African soccer leader Patrice Motsepe was re-elected Wednesday and urged working with private financiers to help federations build national stadiums in countries where government budgets are tight.
The 54 member federations of the Confederation of African Football — 12 of whom currently cannot host national-team games in international competitions — elected Motsepe by acclaim unopposed to have a second four-year term.
“I was in Rwanda recently for a new stadium, and I was in Kenya, in Uganda, in Tanzania,” Motsepe said at a post-election news conference in Cairo. “New stadiums are being built because governments are beginning to recognize that football is an important part of the development and growth of a country.”
Motsepe, a South African billionaire with mining interests, also renews his $300,000-a-year position as a vice president at FIFA, whose president Gianni Infantino sat with Motsepe on stage Wednesday.
The owner of Mamelodi Sundowns, which will play in the FIFA Club World Cup in the United States in June, Motsepe has strong political connections as a brother-in-law of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.
Motsepe referred Wednesday to his talks with other heads of African governments.
“Many of the heads of state I meet, they say to me,” Motsepe told African soccer leaders, “’Whatever money we have, we have got to pay back our loans. We love football but we have to ask ourselves should we take the money to build a stadium or build a hospital or build a clinic or spend more on education?'”
“There is a love for football but the support of the government is not as strong as it can be. And it is not because the governments don’t love football," he said.
Motsepe said there are now only 12 CAF members, compared to 38 in recent years, which do not have stadiums of a high enough standard to be certified for international games.
Those include Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Gambia, Namibia and Zimbabwe which have played qualifying games for the men's 2026 World Cup in neutral countries, often in Morocco and South Africa.
“But for us it is 12 too many,” the CAF president said, promising to engage more with private financiers. “You cannot develop football in any country in Africa if the national teams and clubs do not play in front of their supporters.”
Africa has a record nine guaranteed places at the first 48-team men's World Cup next year being hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico. At the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, Morocco became the first African team ever to reach the semifinals.
Four African teams will play at the 32-team Club World Cup: Sundowns, Al Ahly of Egypt, Wydad of Morocco and Esperance of Tunisia.
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AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
Graham Dunbar, The Associated Press
