15th April, 2011
The Rand Stadium has been dumped as a venue for the 2011 African Youth Championships as organisers seek to cut costs.
The majority of matches will be played at the Dobsonville Stadium in Soweto, bar two – Mali vs Lesotho 23 April and Nigeria vs Gambia 24 April, which will be played at Milpark.
These two games form part of the final round-robin matches, which must kick-off at the same time as the corresponding fixture in the group.
Plans to use the Rand Stadium have been scrapped, cutting the costs of a tournament whose budget crisis has already come as an embarrassment to Safa.
South Africa’s Under-20 team kick off the tournament on Sunday against Mali, followed immediately by a match between Egypt and Lesotho in Group A. Group B will kick off with a double-header attraction on Monday.
It will go on until next weekend, after which the top two teams in each group go on to the semi-finals on 28 April with the final to be played on Sunday, May 1.
All matches will have free entry but will be ticketed for safety reasons. The four semi-finalists also qualify for the Fifa Under-20 World Cup in Colombia in July and August.