Grant: A crisis erupts within the Senegalese Federation

The Senegalese Football Federation is experiencing a new internal crisis at a time when it is waging a legal dispute before the Court of Arbitration for Sport against the Royal Moroccan Football Federation and the Confederation of African Football, after the latter’s appeals committee decided to consider Morocco a winner in the final of the African Cup of Nations by three clean goals and Senegal withdrew.

A report by the “Sport News Africa” newspaper revealed an open confrontation between the president of the federation, Abdoulaye Fall, and a group of 16 members of the executive office, stating that these members entered into an unprecedented state of public rebellion due to the method of distributing the granting of the continental title.

According to the same data, the spark of the dispute goes back to the method of managing the file of financial grants related to “CAN 2025,” as the 16 members accuse the president of the federation of making unilateral decisions regarding the distribution of financial rewards that amounted to about 13 million African francs, without going through the internal consensus procedures.

The crisis did not stop at the numbers, but rather extended to the names, after anger erupted within the union following the exclusion of prominent figures from benefiting, which deepened the feeling among some parties that “privileges are distributed selectively” within the institution.

On the other hand, the report stated that there are those who consider the controversy to be artificial, due to the existence of internal evidence that precisely specifies the methods of disbursing compensation, which means that part of the decisions may be legally framed, despite the political and regulatory controversy that accompanies it.

Behind this administrative controversy, another, more obvious battle appears, related to the struggle over the financial privileges associated with participation in “Cannes 2025”, as some opposition members demand to benefit from additional grants, including presidential rewards amounting to 50 million CFA francs, despite their not being included in the official delegation.

As attempts at internal calm faltered, the opposition party chose to escalate by bringing the crisis out into the open, in a step that further exposed the extent of the division within the union and brought the dispute out of the realm of “internal management” to the forefront of public debate.

“Sport News Africa” concluded that what is happening within the Senegalese Federation is not just a dispute over grants, but rather a real governance crisis that threatens the image of an institution that is supposed to lead football in the country, but today it finds itself at the heart of a storm of successive internal conflicts.