Lawyers: “CAF” decision matches “Al-Tas”

The Moroccan Lawyers Club confirmed that the decision of the Confederation of African Football to declare the Senegalese national team defeated by withdrawing from the “Cannes Morocco 2025” final matches the jurisprudence of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (Al-Tas), which is expected to consider the Senegalese Football Federation’s appeal of the aforementioned decision.

This came in a press statement allocated by the club to respond to what was stated in the press conference held yesterday, Thursday, by the President of the Senegalese Football League, with the assistance of his defense colleague, where the club stated that it followed this media outing “with astonishment tinged with bitterness.”

The Moroccan Lawyers Club considered that “the President of the Senegalese University, faithful to his verbal gaffes, used medieval language and a warlike and insulting lexicon, going so far as to describe resorting to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (TAS) as a ‘moral and legal campaign’.”

The same source explained that “this media lexicon, coupled with accusations of ‘administrative robbery’, reflects clear confusion,” and added: “Technical issues are not pleaded with words of war; describing a decision issued by a sound and confrontational legal procedure as a ‘crude’ decision is something that falls, at best, into sentiment, and at worst, into bad faith.”

The club warned itself that “the law is not a rigid matter,” stressing that “the Appeals Committee’s decision did not come out of nowhere, but rather constitutes a saving jurisprudence to fill a textual loophole related to withdrawal from the stadium.” In this regard, it stressed that “this decision is in line with the jurisprudence of the Court of Arbitration for Sport, and will be recorded in history, as it represents the end of the era of ‘sports bullying’ in African stadiums.”

The statement added: “From now on, blackmail by withdrawing will not be able to replace sports ethics.”

The club considered that "the president of the Senegalese university ventured into a dangerous slide when he described the imprisonment of 18 fans as 'political blackmail'," and continued: "He seems to have forgotten that no one is above the law, especially when the acts of sabotage and attacks attributed to them are documented with conclusive video evidence. To claim otherwise is an insult to the judicial sovereignty of the Kingdom of Morocco."

The same source confirmed that “the independent Moroccan judiciary deals with public rights crimes with the strictness of the law, far from any football considerations,” adding in this regard that “the President of the Senegalese University is not in a position that allows him to distribute ethics certificates, given the recent events related to corruption in his own environment.”