Panorama
Kigali, 08/03/2018 – Fédération Rwandaise de Football Association (FERWAFA) has withdrawn its bid of hosting the 2019 FIFA U-17 World Cup Tournament.
The FERWAFA president Nzamwita Vincent said on Thursday morning that Rwanda has informed FIFA of her decision to withdraw their bid to host the tournament due to time factor and logistics aspects.
“After submitting our intent last year to host the tournament and having critically realized that we are left with a few months to the start of the tournament (tournament expected to be held between August-October, 2019), we believe we don’t have enough time to logistically meet the minimum requirements of hosting a successful 2019 FIFA U-17 World Cup Tournament that we desire as a nation,”
“We have talked with our major stakeholders involved in this process from the onset and we think this is the right decision to take. We however, remain committed and open to hosting any other football event that would be entrusted to us in future,” he said.
However, the delay by FIFA to carry out their inspection to access Rwanda’s readiness also hampered plans of ensuring that the required facilities requested by FIFA would be availed on time after their visit which was initially set for late February but was later postponed to a further date which is yet to be known.
The FIFA inspection visit would have enabled Fédération Rwandaise de Football Association (FERWAFA) to know possible areas they would need to expand or work on in terms of hosting facilities ahead of the final tournament if the hosting rights were to be granted to Rwanda.
After the inspection visit, the FIFA team of experts would then have to report back to the FIFA Council before a final decision on the definitive host of the 2019 FIFA U-17 World Cup would be announced later in March.
In November last year, Rwanda submitted her definitive bid book to host the memorable 2019 FIFA U-17 World Cup.
The bid book constituted the overview of the country, proposed hosting sites, maps of the hosting cities, sporting information, and the overview of the stadiums (existing and new ones to be constructed) which will host the games, training sites and medical facilities.
Included was also the safety and security in the country, hotels, travel between host team cities, travel within host cities, overview of finance conditions, overview of development and legacy of the country and human and labour rights, government declaration and hosting agreements.
According to the definitive bid book, six proposed stadiums were earmarked to host the tournament namely; Amahoro stadium, Stade de Kigali, Stade Umuganda, Stade Huye, Stade Muhanga (to be renovated) and Stade Bugesera (to be constructed).
Training facilities earmarked were Stade Kicukiro, Stade Mumena, Stade Kamena, Stade Musanze (to be renovated with an artificial turf), Ferwafa turf (to be renovated), Amahoro annexe training facility (to be renovated), Umuganda annexe training facility (to be renovated) and Bugesera training facility (to be constructed).
Fédération Rwandaise de Football Association (FERWAFA) takes this opportunity to thank all stakeholders (government Ministries and Agencies) that were involved in the intensive process of preparing the Rwanda’s bid book for the FIFA U-17 World Cup tournament.
Source: FERWAFA
