The “Alkan” final dispute.. “TAS” scenarios and the structure of Morocco’s legal advocacy

An “institutional analysis memorandum” issued by the African Center for Strategic Studies and Digitalization (CAESD), on Friday, confirmed that the challenge before the “Court of Arbitration for Sport” in the event of a dispute in the 2025 African Cup of Nations final match is “finding a delicate balance: accepting an exceptional response to an exceptional case to not normalize unacceptable behavior, while ensuring that this exception does not turn into a normal technique to retroactively overturn the results.”

The memorandum entitled “The 2025 African Cup of Nations Final: From the title dispute to the stakes of governance, soft power and digital media” concluded that there was “a conflict between two legal logics.” The first reading (CAF) is based on Articles 82 and 84, where leaving the field without permission is considered an administrative loss (3 to zero). As for the second reading (Senegal), it focuses on the fact that the match was resumed and actually ended, and that changing the result later affects the “legal security” of the competition.

Based on a forward-looking analysis, the experts of the same center, based in Tangier, formulated the expected scenarios for the Court of Arbitration for Sport (TAS/CAS) decision, stressing that “the scenario of upholding the essence of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) decision is the relatively most likely possibility at the present time.” This assessment is based on the existence of a real and strong regulatory basis in the tournament regulations, as well as the seriousness and decisive nature of the conduct in question. There also emerges an urgent institutional need for sports bodies to deter the recurrence of such behaviors that may threaten the continuity of play and the competition system in the future.

Next in terms of “reasonableness” is “the possibility of moving toward a compromise or making a partial amendment to the decision.” In this path, the court may choose - according to the same analysis - to maintain the essence of the legal logic adopted by “CAF”, “but with intervention to mitigate some of the penal or sporting effects resulting from it.” This may include re-adjusting how sanctions are imposed to ensure that they are precisely proportional to the facts, while retaining part of the disciplinary or regulatory sanctions to ensure an element of deterrence.

On the other hand, issuing a decision in favor of Senegal remains a “serious possibility,” although it ranks lower than previous possibilities. This hypothesis derives its strength from “the weight of the argument for actually completing the match until its end, and the principle of legal security and stability of the results acquired on the field.” This possibility is also reinforced by the fact that not all of the Senegalese national team players left the field completely and simultaneously, which is a fact that the court may give considerable weight in its final evaluation.