Expert opinion: Senegal has a strong chance of reclaiming its 2025 AFCON trophy
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Senegal has a strong chance of reclaiming its 2025 AFCON trophy, according to a legal expert
Sénégal/@caf
Against all odds, the appeals committee of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) has decided to strip Senegal of the 2025 AFCON trophy and award it to Morocco.
This announcement sent shockwaves throughout the football world. Never before has a title been taken away from a nation several weeks after the final of a continental tournament.
However, this decision is not final. Senegal can appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) to challenge the CAF appeals committee's ruling. According to Tunisian legal expert Aymen Driss, the "Lions" have a strong chance of reclaiming their trophy. Here are his arguments.
The CAF appeals committee invoked Article 84 of the Africa Cup of Nations regulations to declare Senegal the loser and award the title to Morocco. This article refers to Article 82 of the same regulations, which states that any team leaving the pitch before the end of regulation time without the referee's permission is considered to have lost and is permanently eliminated from the ongoing competition.Reading this article in its absolute form, one could argue that there is, in principle, a legal basis to support the decision.However, applying this rule to the final is problematic: the issue here is leaving the pitch, and while the Senegalese team did indeed leave, they returned afterwards and play resumed without the referee ending the match definitively. The game continued through regulation time and into extra time.Thus, this situation does not explicitly correspond to the cases provided for in the regulations.Moreover, the discretion in such situations falls to the referee as the main decision-maker during the match, which he confirmed by allowing play to continue until the end.Therefore, declaring a defeat solely on the basis of leaving the pitch—when the referee did not definitively stop the match—may be considered, but remains legally questionable. In reality, the rules were not made to penalize teams, but to ensure the fair application of sports law and uphold the principle of equal opportunity for all teams.A proper interpretation of the legal texts also requires not limiting oneself to a literal reading but considering their spirit and the purpose for which they were created, especially when dealing with situations not explicitly foreseen. In this context, a strict and purely literal reading of a text without considering the particular circumstances can lead to unjust decisions that go against the principles of sporting fairness.Thus, any decision must strike a balance between respecting the regulations and achieving justice, which remains open to interpretation and debate in such cases.Finally, in my legal opinion—and noting that I do not have access to all the documents (match sheet and other reports)—Morocco's chances before the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) are very slim, unlike those of Senegal.