It is important to take Ebola seriously, but Morocco took too long to make a decision and the North African nation had various options to control the risk, notably preventing fans from West Africa from entering the country.
AFCON is still one of the world’s most important football tournaments and a sudden cancellation would have been ridiculous.
The health of a continent is more important than any football tournament, but given the distance from Morocco to where the disease is most prevalent, the risk posed to the North African nation would have been small.
Morocco offered to host the tournament the following year, but to have staged competitions in successive years — 2016 and 2017 — would have caused a huge rumpus with European clubs.
Of course, an AFCON should be played on African soil, but would offering it to Qatar have been a better solution?
New host Equatorial Guinea — the right choice?
For CAF to give the tournament to Equatorial Guinea, however, was a controversial decision.
Western officials cite Equatorial Guinea as an example of a resource-rich country that is plagued by kleptocracy problems.
President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo has been in power since 1979 and the vast majority of his citizens live in poverty. In recent years, anti-corruption groups have tried to draw attention to the ruling family’s assets in Europe and the United States.
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Likewise, an average African worker would never be able to afford the airfare, while accommodation can be completely overpriced. A very average hotel room during the 2010 AFCON was sometimes more than $500.
Ticket prices at AFCON are also too high for fans. A normal ticket costs many times more than local fans would normally pay for tickets at a domestic league game.
Average African fans just can’t afford to pay such prices for a football game. Poverty forces people to buy food or medication instead of spending crazy money on a football match.
Every match of the host nation is traditionally a sell-out crowd, and as long as the host is still in the tournament, the attendances are decent.
But when the home team is eliminated, you sometimes get the feeling that the football in the country has just died, with local supporters losing immediate interest in the tournament.
These days, African fan culture gravitates towards many of them supporting European teams. So much so, that the English Premier League means much more to African fans than AFCON.
Who cares to watch Guinea against Senegal if you can see Chelsea, Manchester City, Manchester United, Liverpool or Arsenal at the same time on television?
African football, therefore, has a real struggle competing against the major European leagues, with Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo and Neymar now the true idols of African fans.
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