Times Of Swaziland: SAFA, COSAFA IRON OUT DIFFERENCES

SAFA, COSAFA IRON OUT DIFFERENCES
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Machawe Fakudze on 08/05/2023 08:21:00


MBABANE – The suspense over whether this year’s Council of Southern African
Football Associations (COSAFA) games will be hosted or not is over.
This comes after the South African Football Association (SAFA) and COSAFA held a
fruitful and successful meeting to find common ground on hosting COSAFA
tournaments in South Africa (SA). The two football bodies were reportedly been
at loggerheads over the hosting of tournaments under the auspices of COSAFA, as
SAFA, according to information, which was sourced from cosafa.com, came to this
decision to explain that these tournaments were a drain to the government of
South Africa (SA) resources and therefore hindered COSAFA from accessing
funding.
The Association’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Tebogo Motlanthe said hosting
the COSAFA tournaments diverted government money for their national teams, he
said they should not be burden with tournaments which they had not bid for as at
some point they went against their priorities as an association. The
associations were back at the roundtable this past Wednesday to unpack any
differences and misunderstandings, which may have arisen relating to the bidding
for and hosting COSAFA events. According to cosafa.com the misunderstandings,
have been ironed out through transparent and open discussion, an agreement on a
new way forward was reached.
This year’s flagship COSAFA Championship has been penned for end of May and
beginning of June. It’s billed to take part in Durban, South Africa (SA). SA
has hosted all the regional tournaments in the last five years. It is worth
mentioning that Eswatini has never won the COSAFA Cup as they only achieved
reaching the semi-finals. The country’s Mbabane Swallows attacking midfielder
Felix ‘Fela’ Badenhorst is the all-time leading goalscorer with nine goals.
Meanwhile, no immediate comment could be obtained from Eswatini Football
Association (EFA) on the latest development as efforts to get one proved futile
as Marketing and Communications Officer Muzi Radabe was unreachable.