CAF, Senegal and Morocco's AFCON 2025 final: How African football ended up in a Swiss courtroom

On Saturday, two days after filing a formal appeal at the Court of Arbitration for Sport, Senegal paraded the AFCON trophy on the pitch at Stade de France before their friendly against Peru.

Thiaw, the Senegal coach, apologised immediately after the match and said the walkout was wrong regardless of the provocation.

That admission of fault was genuine. It was also, as things turned out, exactly the kind of evidence CAF needed to justify applying Articles 82 and 84.

Perhaps his honesty cost his team the title.

Kalidou Koulibaly lifted it in front of their supporters, the crowd roared, and the players celebrated as though nothing had changed.

In the eyes of the Senegalese Football Federation and its legal team, nothing has. As far as CAF and Morocco are concerned, the trophy belongs to the Atlas Lions. As of today, two national bodies, one continental governing authority and an international arbitration tribunal in Lausanne are all simultaneously claiming ownership of the same piece of silverware, and nobody knows how or when this ends.

The original incident, on January 18 in Rabat, was dramatic enough before the legal machinery started moving.

With the score at 0-0 in the closing seconds of stoppage time, Congolese referee Jean-Jacques Ndala pointed to the spot after a VAR check for a challenge on Brahim Diaz by El Hadji Malick.

Senegal's players reacted with fury. Coach Pape Thiaw led them off the pitch in protest, and for 16 extraordinary minutes the AFCON final teetered on the edge of abandonment.

They came back, Morocco missed the penalty through Brahim Diaz, Pape Gueye scored in extra time, Senegal won 1-0, and then, two months later, none of it counted.

CAF's Appeals Board ruled on March 17 that Senegal had violated Articles 82 and 84 of the AFCON regulations by leaving the pitch, declaring the match forfeited and handing Morocco a 3-0 technical victory.

What made the ruling so contentious, legally and morally, is the fact that Senegal came back, played out the match, and won.

Senegal's legal team has assembled an international roster of lawyers from Switzerland, Spain, France and Senegal itself, and they've been loud about it.

Spokesperson Seydou Diagne described the CAF ruling as a “betrayal,” called it a robbery, and said the FSF intends to file corruption complaints against five individuals within CAF. Juan de Dios Crespo Perez, another of their lawyers, went further, saying the ruling “openly violates the laws of the game” and that if CAS allows it to stand, the winner of the next World Cup could theoretically be decided by lawyers rather than players.

That last line was designed for headlines rather than legal briefs, but the underlying concern it points to is that a precedent that allows a governing body to overturn a completed match result based on conduct during the match, rather than corruption or falsification of results, would be genuinely unprecedented in sport.

Morocco's position is straightforward and, from their perspective, entirely justified. Their federation filed the appeal under the existing regulations. CAF's Appeals Board upheld it.

New coach Mohamed Ouahbi, who replaced Walid Regragui after the tournament, has said the case is closed and his focus is the World Cup.

Regragui himself was harsher in his original assessment, saying Senegal's walkout gave Africa “a shameful image.” The Atlas Lions drew 1-1 against Ecuador in Madrid on Friday in Ouahbi's first game in charge, three months out from facing Brazil in their World Cup opener on June 13.

They are officially AFCON 2025 champions, and they are behaving like it.

What both sides are leaving largely unaddressed is the on-pitch decision that started all of this.

Every neutral assessment of the penalty awarded to Morocco has concluded it was, at minimum, extremely soft.

Thiaw, the Senegal coach, apologised immediately after the match and said the walkout was wrong regardless of the provocation. That admission of fault was genuine. It was also, as things turned out, exactly the kind of evidence CAF needed to justify applying Articles 82 and 84.

Perhaps his honesty will cost his team the title.

CAS has said it will rule as 'swiftly' as possible, and Senegal has requested an accelerated procedure aiming for a decision within two months rather than the standard nine to twelve.

If that timeline holds, there could be a ruling before the World Cup, which would make the situation even more loaded given that both Senegal and Morocco have qualified and will be in North America in June.

One CAS arbitrator, Raymond Hack, suggested that the court could side with Senegal on the principle that completed matches should not be overturned absent corruption. Others have noted that CAF's regulations are the specific governing law of the competition and that the Appeals Board was operating within its authority.

The outcome is genuinely uncertain, which is an interesting thing to say about a football match that was played and finished 10 weeks ago.

CAF, meanwhile, has called an emergency Executive Committee meeting, with leadership issues and the fallout from the AFCON ruling both on the agenda.

African football deserved better from its tournament. Morocco delivered a genuinely world-class AFCON on the organisational side. The controversy surrounding the final has overshadowed it completely, and until CAS rules, it's going to keep doing exactly that.