The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) on Thursday opened its hearing into Senegal’s appeal against being stripped of the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) title in favour of Morocco.
The hearing in Lausanne comes almost 10 months after Pape Gueye’s extra-time goal gave Senegal victory over the tournament hosts following a chaotic finish to normal time.
Many Teranga Lions players had walked off the pitch in protest at a late penalty award to Morocco, which was missed by Brahim Diaz once the Senegalese players returned to the pitch almost 20 minutes later.
But in March, the Confederation of African Football (CAF) overturned that result, awarding Morocco a 3-0 victory, and the title.
Thursday’s opening day of the hearing lasted more than five hours behind closed doors.
“I know that the wait for supporters, as much the Senegalese and Moroccan ones as all African fans, has been very long,” CAS general manager Matthieu Reeb told reporters, before adding that the hearing could last “days or even weeks”.
The Moroccan delegation did not speak to reporters but Senegal’s football federation president Abdoulaye Sow said he hoped that “sports law” would be upheld “for the dignity and honour of Africa”.
Following their defeat, Morocco appealed to CAF, who ruled that Senegal had broken rules barring teams from leaving the field of play without the referee’s authorisation.
Senegal blasted that decision as the “most blatant administrative robbery in the history of our sport” and even paraded the trophy to their supporters in Paris at the end of March.
According to Thibault Ulrich, a researcher in sports law at Lausanne University, the CAF ruling was “extremely strict” and failed to recognise Congolese referee Jean-Jacques Ndala’s decision to allow the match to continue.
The International Football Association Board (IFAB), the guardians of the laws of the game, have a rule which suggests that Ndala’s decision to continue the match cannot be overturned, even if he erred in doing so.
CAS’s own rules favour respect for a referee’s decisions, unless he has been proven to be corrupt or acting in bad faith.
On March 18, the Senegalese government called for an investigation into suspected corruption at CAF.
Two weeks before rendering its decision in favour of Morocco, CAF had fired lawyer Yassin Osman Robleh, from Djibouti, who had been in charge of guaranteeing the integrity of its procedures for the previous six years, without publishing its reasons.
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