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Mokoena explains why SAFA pulled out of the 2023 Women’s World Cup bid

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The South African Football Association (SAFA) has decided not to continue with its bid for the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup.

This was confirmed by SAFA Acting CEO Gay Mokoena following their annual general meeting at the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg on Saturday.

South Africa were the only African nation among nine countries that initially submitted a bid for the 2023 World Cup hosting rights in March.

The deadline for the submission of the final bids is this coming Friday and Mokoena explains why they’ve decided to pull out.

With SA now pulling out of this race, this leaves South Korea/North Korea, Brazil, Colombia, Japan, Argentina and Australia still in the mix. SAFA still needed some government support and guarantees before submitting their final bid.

But as they turn their attention to the 2027 edition and continuing to build a strong national women’s league, Mokoena has denied that a lack of government support was behind their decision to pull out.

After tabling their financial loss of R74 million, Mokoena confirmed that there’s a turnaround strategy they are going to implement and that there’s already sponsors who are lining up for the national women’s league.

With the Nike sponsorship deal having expired, SAFA is expected to announce a new deal next month. Last week Mokoena had revealed that there were four companies lining up including Nike and now he says they’ve increased to five.

Coming to this AGM, SAFA had also spoken about the proposal to introduce subscriptions for their members and that was accepted by the delegates in the congress. Now Mokoena says they will have to focus on implementing this subscription and they have their targets for the first year.Report by Velile Mnyandu

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