The Confederation of African Football (CAF) has declared the Baba Yara Stadium in Kumasi unfit to host senior international matches.
This was confirmed by the Ghana Football Association (GFA) in a statement shared on their website on Tuesday.
The GFA said they received correspondence from CAF’s Development Officer Raul Chipenda that the stadium is no longer approved to host senior category ‘A’ matches.
The Baba Yara Stadium was the venue that hosted the first leg of Ghana’s Qatar 2022 World Cup playoff game against Nigeria after being granted a one-game licence.
However, CAF said in a statement that there has been little improvement on the stadium, which makes it unfit to host international matches.
“Following the one match approval given by CAF for the use of Baba Yara Sports Stadium (Kumasi) in the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 African qualifiers playoff round matches 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,” a section of the statement said.
“Unfortunately, the level of implementation of all the CAF remarks in the stadium were not satisfactory, including the quality of the equipment and materials used in the different functional areas in the stadium. As a result of the reported situation, we have taken the following decision:
“Formal prohibition is made to use the Baba Yara Sports Stadium (Kumasi) in all CAF/FIFA Senior international A matches.
“The stadium is automatically removed from the list of CAF approved stadiums and will only be approved for any subsequent CAF/FIFA international senior national teams matches and CAF Men’s inter-clubs competitions following the implementation of all the CAF remarks.”
Meanwhile, Ghana is expected to kick off the qualifiers for the 2023 AFCON in June after being paired against Madagascar, Angola and the Central African Republic (CAR) in Group E during Tuesday’s draw.
However, it remains to be seen which stadium the Black Stars will use for their home matches.
Source: TheBBCghana.Com
