OPINION: AFCON 2025: Football like politics

From Maryam Ogunremi

For days I have been thinking about the CAF appeals commission’s decision to deprive Senegal of its championship at the 2025 AFCON, which took place in Morocco. I know it’s coming a few days later, but I just can’t get over it.

Much has been said by experts and those of us who are just lovers of the round skin game. While some are in favour, others are neutral and others have criticized the decision of the board which is said to be headed by a Nigerian. I don’t blame you for the Council’s decision as some have done, but I don’t feel comfortable with the decision and I have my reasons.

Now, taking it one step at a time. When we were young, there was a popular saying, “ara ija l’eyin wa” – the literal meaning is that when you get into a fight, the use of your teeth is a weapon. What is the relationship with what happened in Senegal? We’re almost there.

On 17 March, the CAF Appeals Commission declared that Senegal will lose the championship because the players violated AFCON regulations on articles 82 and 84. Article 82 stated that if a team leaves the pitch before the final whistle without the referee’s permission, or refuses to play, it is considered to have lost the match. According to reports, Senegal players, with the exception of Sadio Mané, started for 17 minutes. This means that they have come into conflict with this regulation. Hit one on them already.

Article 84, however, acts as a guarantor. This is like the executive arm of the government. When the legislator establishes the law, the executive is responsible for implementing it. This article states that a team violating Article 82 is eliminated from the competition and loses 3-0, unless the opponent had a higher score at the time. This is the part where you say, “It’s all over!”

But then, when the Senegalese players returned to the pitch, the referees said or did nothing to enforce these two articles. Why not? Is it correct to say that they do not know of the existence of such articles or do they believe that Senegal has every right to protest? This should be investigated further from the CAF side in this gap. Well, they recovered, the ‘illegal penalty’ was played and lost by the Moroccans and Senegal scored one and won the trophy. Fantastic, right? This was exactly how most of us felt when they won the trophy, because we wanted them to win.

58 days later, the CAF appeals panel said this should not have been the case. So they spoke out in favor of the Moroccans. In the Appeal, it is very important for us to know that Senegal presented its case through the Senegalese Football Federation (FSF). They noted that they had serious concerns” for the safety of the players, because the team bus was stormed upon arrival, and they had problems with the hotel the day before the match, their training location was changed at the last minute, with the new one very close to where the Moroccans were training, and problems with the allocation of tickets, which resulted in strong pre-match tension. From my point of view, these are very strong points.

Where then does “ara ija l’eyin wa” come into play? As much as the articles are worth, so is the safety of the Senegalese players. We saw how the second goalkeeper, who should be busy warming up in case of unforeseen circumstances to take Mendy’s place, was busy fending off ball boys on Mendy’s towel. I mean, it was crazy. If I leave the field for this, I don’t think CAF should blame me for this as they were too busy cooking what should not have been cooked for Morocco. Why did they issue such regulations without opening an opening for such cases? Are they saying those kids should have kept playing until they got physically hurt on that field? Leaving that field was Senegal’s tooth in that fight and he chose to bite to survive, I don’t see why this is a problem.

Calling for clear and absolute victory is something that will never cease to amaze me in Africa. To me, CAF simply told the world that the referees they had in charge of the match were, for lack of a subtle word, idiots. This means that those guys know almost nothing about the AFCON regulations and their decision to award the trophy to Senegal, who won it categorically, was bullshit. I intend!

Let’s get out of football and take it to the elections. The same thing keeps happening. In our elections in Africa, the court is now the place where people turn to steal the mandate of the masses. The court will award the seat of power to the second-place finisher because the first-place finisher did not appeal. They turned the Election Commissions into vibrations and Insha Allah. The voice of the people has been drowned out by “technicalities”.

And every election cycle we continue to see high rates of voter apathy. People have stopped coming out because the court – from the General Court to the Supreme Court – will end up overturning the mandates and replacing them with technicalities.

So, I was not satisfied with the turn of events in the Senegal vs Morocco case, and it is sad that in AFRICA OUR FOOTBALL TOURNAMENTS ARE AS GOOD AS OUR POLICY.

Maryam Ogunremi is a broadcaster, writing from Abeokuta

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