By Duncan Mackay
January 13 – Australia will attend the Confederation of African Football (CAF) Congress in Luanda to promote its bid to host the 2018 or 2022 World Cup, even though they are upset about being unable to give a presentation after rivals Qatar stepped in to sponsor the event.
There had been speculation that Australia would boycott the event but Ben Buckley, the chief executive of Football Federation Australia (FFA), insisted that they will travel to Angola to continue their campaign.
Buckley said: “The Africa Cup Of Nations is one of the most prestigious tournaments in world football and we always planned to have a strong presence at the event.”
Australia are the country understood to be most upset at the decision of CAF to prevent the other bidding countries from giving presentations following their sponsorship deal with Qatar.
If, as expected, the 2018 World Cup is awarded to one of the European bidders then that would leave Australia among the favourites for 2022 but they fear the prospect of a bitter fight to persuade the Asian Confederation, of which they are a member, to back them ahead of Qatar.
But Australia still see the event as a good opportunity to lobby.
Buckley said: ”It is a fantastic tournament and a great opportunity for us to talk about Australia’s bid credentials and support football in Africa.”
Buckley is expected to be accompanied on the trip by Bonita Mersiades, the head of corporate and public affairs at the FFA.
But the FFA have abandoned plans to send assistant coach Graham Arnold (pictured) to Angola because of concerns over safety.
They had taken their decision before the terrorist attack on the Togo team last Friday.
He had been due to travel to Cabinda to watch Togo’s match against Ghana on Monday.
John Boultbee, the FFA’s head of national teams, said: ’We just felt it wasn’t safe, but it’s horrible to be proven right.
”Initially, we had plans for Graham to attend Togo’s game against Ghana because Ghana is in our pool at the World Cup but when we had a closer look at it we decided not to send him on security grounds.
”It was a game we felt was important to be at because Graham would have had the opportunity to assess Ghana at full strength in a competitive tournament, but not at any cost.
”The fact they were playing in this enclave was of concern as it is quite a remote area and would have required either flying there in a very small aircraft or travelling by land across the Congo, and we just thought that wasn’t the right thing to ask someone to do.
“Of course, we weren’t expecting anything like this to happen but when the news came through there was a little bit of relief that we hadn’t sent anyone.”
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