CAF AND THE LONGEST FINAL IN FOOTBALL

JOSHUA J. OMOJUWA argues that CAF’s decision to award the 2025 African Cup of Nations title to Morocco is unfortunate

A few days ago, an On Air Personality (OAP) on Nigeria Info FM called a caller olodo on air. She said, “You are an olodo you know, you came this far just to prove how much of an olodo you are.” It was not in the spirit of the easy banter that Lagos radio has always trafficked in. Just flatly, as though it were acceptable. That alone would have been enough to register as a moment of concern. But the OAP went further, wishing, on air, that the caller gets kidnapped. This was the kind of statement that should have ended a career, at least momentarily via a suspension, before the hour was out. But there was more.

What happened instead was more instructive than the original offence. The radio station did not quietly reprimand the OAP and move on. It posted the video on social media. Proudly. As if to say, “our OAP, in whom we are well pleased.” They deleted it after they were called out. That sequence, from the statement, the amplification, the deletion only under external pressure, tells you more about the moment we are living in than any piece could. We once lived in a world where you’d be hardpressed to know where an OAP or journalist leans, these days, we take their bias for granted.

Standards do not collapse all at once. They erode. The unthinkable becomes edgy, edgy becomes normal, normal evolves into boring, and the search for the next transgression begins. Nigeria Info FM did not invent this dynamic, it simply revealed how far along the erosion has gone. These are crazy times and this wasn’t even the craziest thing to happen this week.

On January 18, in Rabat, Senegal beat Morocco 1-0 in the final of the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations. The match was chaotic, controversial, and genuinely extraordinary. Morocco were awarded a stoppage-time penalty with the scores level. Senegal’s coach Pape Thiaw led his players off the pitch in protest for 17 minutes while fans tried to storm the field. Captain Sadio Mané eventually coaxed the team back. Morocco’s Brahim Díaz stepped up and chipped a ‘Panenka’ straight at goalkeeper Edouard Mendy. The game went to extra time. Pape Gueye scored. Senegal were champions.  Or so we thought.

CAF’s initial disciplinary hearing imposed fines exceeding one million dollars on both federations and handed out individual bans, but left the result untouched. That was the correct decision. Senegal’s players behaved badly. Their coach did even worse. Punish them, fine them, suspend them; all of that was warranted and proportionate. But the game had been played. The referee had managed it. A winner had been produced on the field of play. That should have been the end of it.

It was not.

Two months after the final, CAF’s Appeal Board handed Morocco a 3-0 forfeit victory, invoking Articles 82 and 84 of the AFCON regulations. The ruling is without precedent in the history of AFCON, and indeed at the highest level of international football.  Morocco did not beat Senegal on a pitch. They beat them in the boardroom, 57 days after the fact, in a process that has handed African football a reputational wound it will be feeling for years.

The Senegalese Football Federation’s secretary general called it “a travesty that rests on no legal basis,” adding: “We felt that the panel was not there to apply the law, but to carry out an order.” CAF awarded a title to the host nation, whose federation brought the appeal, against the team that won the match on the field. Whatever the legal justification, that sequence of facts will follow this decision everywhere.

Morocco’s boardroom prize is their first continental title since 1976.  They are a fine football nation with genuine quality in their squad. I have written pieces about their football development programme. Achraf Hakimi, Brahim Díaz, a generation of players playing at the highest level of the game. None of them deserved to have it handed to them like this.

The deeper damage is to CAF itself; an institution that has spent years trying to rebuild credibility after decades of governance failures, corruption scandals, and the kind of administrative incompetence that caused FIFA to intervene in its operations. That rebuilding effort, whatever progress it had made, has taken a significant hit. Senegal has confirmed it will appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in Lausanne. This process will keep this ruling in public view for the better part of a year, relitigating the decision at every stage. Every month of that process is another month in which the story of the 2025 AFCON is not about the football. It is about whether the organisation running African football can be trusted to govern it.

The answer CAF has given this week is not reassuring.

Senegal’s players behaved wrongly. That much is not in dispute. Thiaw himself admitted it in the heat of the moment, that he reacted badly and should not have led his team off. The appropriate response was what the disciplinary board initially prescribed: fines, suspensions, a clear signal that such conduct will not be tolerated. What was not appropriate, what has never been appropriate in the history of this game at this level, is retroactively stripping a team of a title they won on the field of play, two months after the fact, through an appeals process in which the host nation’s federation was the appellant.

These are the rules, CAF will say. Article 82. Article 84. The regulations are clear. Why didn’t they apply it on the day? Why have the game go on, present medals and trophies?

Regulations exist to serve the integrity of competition. When their application produces an outcome that destroys the very integrity they were designed to protect, the problem is not with the people who violated them. The problem is with the people who chose to apply them this way, when every other option was available. Even now, the longest final in football is still being played.

 Omojuwa is chief strategist, Alpha Reach/BGX Publishing