CAF President Dr Patrice Motsepe press conference

Yeah, thank you. Let me start by expressing my personal deep gratitude to all of you, to the media, local media, global media. We'll talk a little bit towards the end about some of the COSAFA and Southern African issues, but we focus mainly on the performances of the African national teams at the FIFA World Cup. I think that'll take about 90% of the press conference and the remaining 10% will be to deal with various other important initiatives. We've prepared a media statement or a press statement that will be released to you as soon as I have highlighted some of the issues, and then as usual we'll take questions. Let me once more express my deep gratitude to the president of CAF for being here. The president of SAFA is with us, and of course all our partners, General Police, and various others, and what COSAFA as well. Oh, okay, I thought you meant COSAFA. And as I say, thank you very much to the media. We've got some of our beautiful fans, and look at the most wonderful football supporter on the continent who makes us very proud. I see is a black can see there at the back is becoming younger and younger and so good. And just once to express our deep gratitude to the media for the good work they're doing, and also asking questions, and sometimes they have to ask difficult questions which are very important. We have a duty to respond to those questions as best we can. I'm very proud of the media in South Africa on the continent, and the media has a very unique role to play of course in football, but also a broader role to play in our communities. Now I'll spend a few minutes talking about some of the important observations, and as I said, usually we create opportunities for questions.

If you look at the press statement as I said that we will circulate, there are three or four issues that are very important. The first is to look at the performance of the 10 national teams in the FIFA World Cup. We're very proud. I'm very proud. African football is very proud. They did very well. We set very high standards for ourselves. We've got very high expectations. Our clear objective, and we are now more confident than ever before coming from the FIFA World Cup, is to see an African nation becoming champions of the world. I'm more convinced than ever before that that can indeed happen. Life doesn't allow for dreams or plans or expectations which are out of touch with reality. You've got to look at the facts at all times. At the end of the day, I come from a business background and my shareholders always say to me, where are the dividends? Where are the profits? Where's the money? And you can give all sorts of wonderful explanations. At the end of the day, if there's no dividends and you can't give the people who've given you their money to make returns and to make money for them, you've got a big challenge. So we've got a clear expectation that until we have that trophy on the African continent, and you can see we came very close. If you look at some of our top national teams, I had the privilege of talking with some of the most experienced, most respected coaches in the world, and sometimes it's important for me to listen more than express my opinions. One of the common features is that many of our national teams in Africa, their performances reflect that they are as good as the best in the world. Look at what happened between Egypt and Argentina. Look at what happened between Cabo. They said to me the population of Cabo, I had my own number and some people said it's 10 million. No, I don't know how they get to 10 million. It's more like 600,000. But it shows that with absolute commitment, investment, training in the youth, and of course unity is also important for us. It's important that we increase the cooperation with our governments on the African continent in each of the 54 countries in Africa. We also increase our partnerships with the private sector because an important ingredient for success is financial sustainability, is financial independence. The most successful football nations not just in Africa but in the world have a consistent, reliable, predictable support from the government but also from the private sector. I'm confident that we are making significant progress. It would have been so much more beautiful, but as I said, it's like many years ago when my son came to me and said, daddy, I got 60% in an exam and I did very well. I said, did you say 60? Where the 40%? What happened to it? And he said, yeah, but you know my friends got 55. Hey, you don't compare yourself with your friends who get 55. You compare yourself with those who are 85. So part of my job, part of the jobs of every president in every one of the 54 countries in Africa, the football federation or the football president, is to continuously give hope, give confidence, give inspiration, give encouragement. People sometimes are not certain, but when they see the success and when they see the consistent success, they then become significantly more confident. Bafana Bafana played very well. Sagal played very well. I can say Ghana played very well. Algeria, the two nations that did exceptionally well from an African perspective, and it's purely based on the results, is Egypt and Morocco. The results speak for themselves. But I mean, we're in South Africa and I'm going to give the message that I give in South Africa, which is the same message I'll give in every one of the 54 countries on the continent. I'm very proud of Nigeria. Nigeria's Cameroon. I can say the same about every one of the 54 nations. Nigeria didn't make it now. And I keep telling my Nigerian friends, a World Cup for me without Nigeria, without Cameroon, and many others is incomplete because Nigeria's always made us proud. Cameroon, many many others. And part of what we are going to do now is to work harder than we've ever done before. Because in life, if you work hard and you are determined, you succeed. You may not succeed immediately. You may not succeed overnight. In fact, you seldom succeed overnight. You seldom succeed immediately. So I'm enormously confident, and as I have to emphasize, I cannot have confidence that's based in the air without some quantifiable, accessible, objective criteria and facts that justify that optimism. One of the objectives of South Africa has to be at the next FIFA World Cup, we're going to go to the semi-finals at least or the finals. You can do that. And the same applies to every one of the 10 nations. Morocco went to the quarterfinals. We're very proud of Morocco because the success, and we're very proud of Egypt, and we're very proud of every single one of the 10 nations that went to the World Cup. Enormously proud. The success of any single national team at the World Cup, because the FIFA World Cup is the highest in the world, is something that all of us should be proud of because if any single country goes to the semi-finals or finals or quarterfinals, they uplift the global respect and recognition of African football.

So we are going to host a meeting. I'm told that the Cup of Vert and some other countries want to host that meeting where we are going to invite all of the coaches of the national teams that participated in the FIFA World Cup and others. And we're going to invite football experts, former legends on the continent, the smartest, the brightest who've played at the highest levels in the world. And the purpose of that meeting is to talk about what can we do better? What do we learn from our performances in America, in Canada, and in Mexico? Where is the room for improvement? Because we're very clear, and this is a different clarity in our mind because it's a clarity that's backed up by results. Ghana played well, Côte d'Ivoire played well, Algeria, I mean, as I said, every single one of them, but we've got a clear plan. We've got the AFCON Palmo next year. Next year will be in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda. I talk about that enormous progress, and that is the flagship competition on the African continent. But we know that we've got players that are as good as the best in the world. You know, when we grow up, I sometimes ask myself why do I love football so much? And I think part of the explanation is when I was 5 years old, they sent me to a Catholic mission boarding school very far away from home, and we used to spend 9 to 10 months in a year. Now when you send a 5-year-old and he spends 9 to 10 months in the Eastern Cape in a place called Elliot, the only thing we had was football. So at age six and age five, we missed our parents but we had football, and that inspired us, it sort of took our minds away from missing everybody at home. And I am no different from millions and millions of young South Africans. I must say I sometimes get a bit jealous when I look at the rugby. The rugby is doing well, but they've got money, and you can't meaningfully succeed without giving confidence to the private sector. And I must say I'm very proud of the work that Gayton is doing. Our minister of sports, very proud, enthusiasm, passion, also put some money, but we must get also more of the private sector, the banks, the mines, and not just in South Africa but on the rest of the continent. So the message from me and from CAF and from African football is enormously positive. Let me tell you something else. If you look at the percentage of African clubs at the FIFA World Cup who qualified from the group stages to the round of 32, it's the highest in the history of African football at the World Cup. The stat speaks for itself. We had 10 national teams. 90% of them qualified from the group stages to the round of 32. The highest ever. The second highest we ever had in the history of African football was in 2022 when we had 40% qualifying from the group stages to the knockout stages, which is the same as the round of 32 today. In 2018, no African national team qualified from the group stages to the knockout stages. In 2014, we had 40%. So the facts speak for themselves. And let me tell you something else. The only other confederation that did better than us is Europe. Europe had 40% in the next stage because we had it's all in the document that we'll circulate. So there's a reason why we have to be optimistic and there's a reason why we now more than ever before must be totally determined that we're going to do better starting today.

I'm a bit disappointed at times when I am told that the schools football in South Africa is not doing as well as it should. I think that's incorrect. It's incorrect. It's factually incorrect. The facts are we have about 8,000 schools. The Motsepe Foundation is sponsoring the Motsepe Schools Football in South Africa. We had about 8,000. I grew up watching, the first time I got exposed to Kaizer, at the back of my mind was when he came to my father's school. I was a very young boy, many too young, and it was paid for Lando High. So when the Motsepe Foundation donated $10 million to the African schools championship, and we've had more than a million young boys and girls, more than 30,000 schools in Africa participating in the African Schools National Championship. It's because I don't want to say the next Messi or the next Ronaldo because I like them and I'm proud of them, but the next, the next, the next Salah is in a village on the continent. Let's tell him if there's a good future in football. I encourage his parents. I was shown when Messi was showering him, giving him a shower. Now, Africans have got all sorts of explanations that confuse people. But I just listen. But I don't charge every fish. So when Yamal's father is from Morocco and his mother is from Guinea, from Africa. Mbappe, father from Cameroon, mother from Algeria. We have the talent. I don't like chasing a ship or a train that I cannot catch. I like chasing a ship or a train that I know I'll get inside. So that talent is there. Enormous talent. The list goes on. I shouldn't mention names of young football players in South Africa because I love we love all of them. So we have to leave this meeting with a sense of enormous optimism but also with a sense of enormous determination more than ever before in every one of the 54 countries on the continent, in every one of the 54 member associations, to say the conclusion we have drawn from the FIFA World Cup 2026 is we've done very well but the performances of the African national teams there have shown us. I mean, Egypt was winning, was leading two zero against Argentina, and I kept hugging the president of Egypt. You are sitting there, instructions is not, please let's you know, you and I know that there's still 15 minutes left. But I must say something else that, and I don't want to mention names of the top coaches in the world who said you've got to be careful because you cannot win yourself into success by defending all the time. The best defense is to attack. If you just wait for them to keep coming at you, they'll keep coming at you. You saw how the goal that meant that they scored when Argentina played against England. I had the president of the United Kingdom of the English national team sitting next to me, and somebody, I don't want to mention his name, one of the most respected coaches in the world said, don't defend, don't defend, but not don't defend, defend but attack. Because if you, so I imagine these are some of the things that we are going to hear at this big conference that we're going to host very soon, and it's going to be an open conference, and the agenda is very simple. What do we learn from the performances of the national teams at the FIFA World Cup? What can we do better? What were some of the areas for improvement? What were the areas where we should take pride and take confidence from? So we live in an era not just in football but in society where it's important to keep looking at the positive, the optimistic, that which encourages. There's always things that will discourage you. There'll always be weaknesses and failures. That's life. But we should spend more than 80% and 90% on the positive, on the good. Take inspiration from that. We are a great continent. Every single one of the 54 nations in Africa has got exceptional football talent. We can do much, much better, and we will do much, much better. And the objective that we've set of an African national team being champions of the world, I have no doubt that we will see it. I mean, I would not have gotten into football, would not have agreed to be president of CAF, as much as I deeply love football, if it wasn't also about the recognition of the enormous power of football to unite our people, to bring our people together. When I went to Nigeria, I was told when the national team plays, there's nobody from the north, there's nobody from the south. We're all Nigerians. Beautiful. There's no Christian, there's no Muslim. We are all Nigerian. Absolutely beautiful. I went to Côte d'Ivoire and they were talking about the problems they had during the years of civil war, and also not just in Côte d'Ivoire but other parts of the continent where there are issues of ethnicity, where ethnic divisions is used as a means to divide. But when somebody from another tribe comes from our country and plays football, we embrace him. This is beautiful. So in Côte d'Ivoire, all people from different ethnic backgrounds, even in the middle of the civil war, come together and support the national team. Now talking about South Africa, and it's always important that there's a clear understanding that my commitment and my obligation is equal to every one of the 54 nations, and what I say about South Africa applies to what I said in Namibia and other parts of the country where we must all work together to increase the cooperation and the unity amongst all football stakeholders. It's very, very important. We need each other. None of us can succeed whether it's in football or outside football on their own. And this is part of my job on the continent. We've done exceptional. I mean, there were some presidents, some heads of states on the African continent I've known for many, many years, and I'll go and sit with him and he'll say to me, you see my brother Patrice, the football president belongs to opposition and they always vote against me, I don't want to see him. I said no, no, no, just bring him closer. Let's use football to unite our people. Maybe, maybe he might just, I can't say might support you if it does that's fine. But the more you reach out to people, and more often you've got to reach out to people who disagree with you and sometimes are even totally opposed to you. More often than not, we come together and succeed. So I'm very confident that we will make enormous progress in South Africa because I sometimes see what's in the media and I'm confident, enormously confident, and it's the same message I've given to many other parts of the continent.

So I don't like reading press statements. I'm very hopeless in reading press statements. What I'm going to do is I'm going to ask them, you've got copies of it there. Okay. Whilst I talk, they will circulate the press statement. You see, he pays my salary, and you know I get almost a million dollars every year from FIFA and CAF, and we donate that money back to football because for us as a family, football is part of our philanthropic obligations. We've always identified football as a means to give back to the people of this country and the continent who've made us what we are. Now, just before I listen to what he says, I just want to make sure. Do you remember the goalkeeper of Cal, superstar? Yes. So he came to me, there was some event that we were hosting and we had all of these heads of state, and very proud, made me very proud, made the continent very proud. I mean, just think about it. 500,000 people can produce football players that draws basically draws with the champions of the world. The population of South Africa is what? 65, 70, I mean how many superstars are there? Not here, Nigeria, everywhere. Many, many outstanding young players. Let me just see before they circulate this. I will be leaving South Africa on Saturday to go to Morocco for the women's, what they call the WAFCON, and we have increased the prize money of the women's WAFCON. Now they gave me some, I almost said some crazy numbers but some very high numbers. They said to me that since the new leadership, since I became president and the people who've been working, the people that I've had the honor to work with, remember no leader succeeds on his own in anything, and the credit should not go to the leader, the credit should go to the people that he or she has the privilege to work with. So people say all these wonderful things about the things I've done in CAF. I would, you know, I think give credit to the presidents of the 54 African member associations. Give credit to my vice presidents. Give credit to the executive committee because we did it together. My pilots were complaining in America. They said to me, but you realize that every day we have to get on the plane and fly to Mexico and fly to Canada and fly to LA and fly to New York. If you are crazy and you work hard, we need to sleep. I said, but you don't play games with pilots because it's not like a taxi when I drive and if I sleep, somebody can wake me up. If the pilots don't wake up, I might wake up in Ukraine or something. So, but I was honored. I attended every, I attended part of my commitment was to attend at least one match of every one of the 10. I love it. So I attended at least one match of every one of the 10, and I attended more matches from some of the other countries, African countries, and then of course I went to the other matches as well. But as I said, we always look at football. I mean, just think of, I mean, I stood there in America and watched in the stadiums when the DRC was playing, and you see the excitement of the people from the Democratic Republic of Congo, beautiful, beautiful country, but like many other of our countries, lots of challenges, but they come together. I went to go and you see people of course, you see people from the continent which is beautiful and encouraging. But you also see people from America, from Brazil. They call it Brazil. This we mustn't say Brazil, it's Brazil. Brazil. I like it. And you see people from Europe, from South America, from Asia, the enormous power of football to bring our people together. I mean, I'm part of that generation that we've got broader duties and broader obligation. When you wake up, I mean, when you grow up, your parents say go and get a degree, get the degree of course, and then your mother says you better make sure you've got money because no girl will look at you if you are if you can't look after her children. She says I like him but this one he can't even support himself. So then you try and say okay let me try and make sure that financially I'm independent. But for me it was different because I came from a family where my father was, we were a successful family, we had businesses, and so money for me was never, I never did things for money from a young stage because I grew up in an environment where we saw what my parents has to do well. So in business of course, my shareholders mustn't hear me say that because they are clear, please make money for us. If you don't make money for us, don't waste our time. So we have to compete and consistently make money for ourselves. But the point I'm making is that we've always looked at football similar like money. Money is important but money doesn't, I always said money doesn't give you happiness. I was talking at the school at the university with some young students and I said hey, the importance of money is exaggerated. Money doesn't give you happiness. One young girl said please give me money. I'll show you what happiness looks like. Just give me money and I'll show you what happiness looks like. But I'm saying this in the context that all of us would talk about football. We absolutely love football and have to see football as well in this context. Look at Chava Chava. Football gave him a future, gave him a career, and that's what we love. Every young boy and girl on the continent, we want to say to them, there's a bright future in football. When we grew up and you hear that your aunt's daughter, her boyfriend is a football player, by you, because but this is many years ago because they thought there was no money in football. Now it's opposite. You married because you love somebody and you can have a good future in football. Now we have increased the prize money of the WAFCON by 900%. It's unbelievable. 900% for the women. And that's why I say to you, you can make all sorts of promises and say all of these nice things if you don't back them up with quantifiable, revisable, and as they would say, touchable. They want to throw a new feel at them, want to touch it. So we've increased the prize money by 900%. Last year, when I became president, the winner of the women's competition got $200,000, and then we got it to $1 million. Now they get $2 million. So you win. We've increased the prize money for the winner by 100%. We've increased the overall the money that we've so the winner gets $2 million, which has been increased enormously, and you'll get it in the document. But we've also increased by 495%. When the current leadership got into football, the total money that was spent for the women's football on the continent was $975,000. Now it's close to $6 million, and there's still a lot more that we have to do.

Two final points before I take questions. The AFCON in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda is going to be enormously successful. There's no World Cup. I mean, when I went to the World Cup in 2014 to Brazil, and there was an opening match, some of the leaders there said to me, sorry, do you see that some parts of the stadium were not complete? They were not 100% ready. So, and of course when I became president of CAF, they said, take the AFCON away from Cameroon. And I could never allow that because we have to have confidence in our people despite the challenges, despite and sometimes there'll be failures as well. We just try again. So the AFCON in East Africa is going to be enormously successful. There are some challenges but I'm proud of the work that the heads of state of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda are doing. And so I'll see all of you next year for the AFCON in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. Two quick points. We've opened the bids for AFCON 2028, AFCON 2032 and AFCON 2036. I will have gone long by then because I was supposed to be president only for one term. And when they said to me that if you leave, all the money we promised for CAF will leave with you. I thought, you know, we've made too many sacrifices to not allow the good work that we've done to be implemented. And part of my job also to make sure that there are good leaders who will not only take over from me but also continue the good work that we've started. And I saw Delhi South Africa and Botswana and others and various others. We've received exciting, exciting bids, and then of course the member associations came to me and said, my president, you see if you increase the number of participating teams from 24 to 28, it's going to make it difficult for us to participate. I mean, you, Dr., have emphasized that you want every zone to host the AFCON. It's because I've seen what the AFCON does. I mean, when the presidents of football in the country say to me, my government has never taken me so serious. They've never allocated so much money to building the stadiums. They've never made so much money available for hotels, for hospitals. They've never encouraged the private sector to support professional football. We have to support professional football. It's the backbone as well as amateur football. But we have to support professional football in every one of the 54 countries on the continent. And tell the private sector, you know, give them money, invest. You will make more money as the businesses that support because our people love companies that are there where our people are. So I'm very excited about the proposals we've received. We'll make announcements. And another very exciting thing is the invitation to tender African football because of governance, because of ethics, because of transparency, because of auditing practices, the private sector wants to support us because they know if they put money into football, it doesn't go into pockets that it's not supposed to go to. It goes to development for young boys and girls, amateur football, support the football federation, support the professional soccer leagues. So we've had a number of enormously exciting, some of the biggest international marketing and agency companies that want to partner with CAF for our commercial rights, TV rights, hospitality. And this is part of the $1 million plan that I've discussed to ensure that every member association gets at least a million dollar from CAF and that money must go to the member association to develop and grow football. Just before I go to the, my apologies, just before I make one final remark, I want to thank Johnny and Fontino for the excellent work that he's done and thank FIFA. Thank Matias for hosting what was the most successful FIFA World Cup in the history of the competition. And they did good work. I'm very proud. And what Gianni has done is to contribute to us increasing the number of African national teams. Enormously important. We have to be smart in Africa. We need partners. We've got to work together with the other confederation. It's very important because at times when we need their votes. So we need friends. We need good partnerships, good relationships. We've got a very good agreement with UEFA to work together on areas where we can develop and grow football. They say that they learn from us. We definitely learn from them as much as we learn from CONMEBOL and from Asia. We've got good ties with CONMEBOL, with Asia, Oceania, CONCACAF, and of course FIFA is our mother body. Very, very proud. And that's why we as Africa, and I personally, Gianni has been loyal, Gianni Infantino has been loyal to Africa, he's been loyal to me. So whoever takes over from, I want to make clear for it. Let me say it in English. You have to have partners. You need to have a president of FIFA who is as committed to African development and growth as Gianni Infantino is. You need that. And then you need to work with others as well, with other confederations, for the success of football in the world because we also need football to develop and grow on the African continent. We're going to meet in Abuja in Nigeria for the ordinary general assembly in November. Nigeria is a proud football nation and there's a reason why I took it to Nigeria and there's a reason why I'm looking at some of the countries in Africa because we have to do something very special in every one of the 54 countries on the continent as much as we have to do something special in South Africa, in Kenya, in Cameroon and all over the continent. Okay. I think we can go home now. Please, no political questions. I think now. All right. So, so they will now circulate the because the political questions are boring. I think you are as bored as I am. I mean, when my shareholders ask me political questions, I have no choice but to answer them. And I sometimes start thinking to myself, I don't think I'm doing a good job because they keep asking these things. So we've agreed no political question. We can and of course I don't know what is golden arrow. I like Ali and then I must speak to you to say I like Zam and Py as well. I like Vidat every single one of the 13. So that's why I love all the wonderful teams from all over the country, all over the continent. Okay. So give the, we can circulate the and golden arrows I love as well, which is a team from Cape Town because yeah just I will be in on Saturday night I fly out to Morocco but I'll be at Jaden Adams's funeral to express my personal condolence. I mean, really, it's a there are certain things I'm weak at, you know, when you hear these things. Oh gosh, it's very painful, but we'll be there to pay our respects and sort of give support to the family and to all our young people in the country to say we are there with you. You are going to circulate.

So the president is the president.

For the winner.