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Cape Town - The South African Football Association (SAFA) has withdrawn its bid for the rights to host the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup.
The deadline for submissions was Friday (December 13) and world governing body FIFA confirmed on its official website that four bids were received.
The four bids came from Brazil, Colombia, Japan and a joint one from Australia and New Zealand.
SAFA indicated that it would be setting its sights on hosting the 2027 World Cup.
"We resolved that as an association we should not proceed with the bid," SAFA's acting CEO Gay Mokoena told the Sport Business website. "We want to strengthen our women’s national league first before we invite the world to come and play. Definitely, we will consider doing 2027 and we think by that time, we will have a stronger women's league and a much stronger women’s national team."
FIFA will now implement an assessment process, including inspection visits to the respective countries across January and February 2020.
Once finalised, an evaluation report will be published and all eligible bids will be presented to the FIFA Council, which is set to select the hosts of the 2023 Women's World Cup at its meeting in Addis Ababa in June 2020.
- Compiled by Herman Mostert
