The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) opened its hearing in the Swiss city of Lausanne this morning, Thursday, preparing to rule on one of the most controversial cases in the history of the Africa Cup of Nations. The crisis surrounding the 2025 edition final between Morocco and Senegal has reached its decisive stage.
Two radically different legal readings of the final now sit before the court. Morocco rely on Articles 82 and 84 of the tournament's regulations. Senegal insist the result was settled on the pitch, after Congolese referee Jean Jacques Ndala allowed their players to return and resumed the match through to its conclusion, with the "Lions of Teranga" winning by one goal to nil following extra time.
At the heart of the Lausanne case lies a single question: what legal effect did the Senegal players' walk-off have, and what did their return to complete the match change? The Appeals Committee of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) later annulled the result, ruling Senegal to have lost by withdrawal and awarding Morocco a 3-0 victory.
Senegalese goalkeeper Edouard Mendy had said last March: "We know how we won the Africa Cup of Nations, and we know what happened on one of the February nights in Morocco." Walid Regragui, the former coach of the Moroccan national team, hit back in media statements: "As far as I'm concerned, I'm the champion of Africa, whether some people like it or not."
Beyond the trading of statements, the Lausanne battle will turn mainly on the interpretation of the regulations, the limits of the referee's authority, and whether a result completed on the pitch can be annulled at all.
African sports network "Afrik-Foot" has reviewed the arguments both sides are expected to present at today's hearing.
Senegal clings to the referee's authority
Expect Senegal to build their defence around Article 5 of the Laws of the Game, issued by the International Football Association Board (IFAB). It establishes the referee's authority to manage the match and the finality of his decisions relating to facts of play.
Senegal insist referee Jean Jacques Ndala allowed their players to return after the withdrawal period, then resumed the match and managed the remainder until he blew the final whistle, declaring Senegal's 1-0 win after extra time.
From this flows the most important question in the Senegalese argument. If the referee allowed the match to resume and then led it to its conclusion, can an administrative body later strip out the result the referee endorsed?
Sports law specialist Pius Ndubuoko told the SABC network the Senegal players "returned to the pitch, the match continued, and then the referee blew the final whistle." In his view, the CAF Appeals Committee could not overturn a decision taken by the referee on the pitch.
The referee's authority is not the only plank. The defence team led by Spanish lawyer Juan de Dios Crespo-Pérez may also argue there is no clear text specifically regulating the case of a team that temporarily leaves the pitch, then returns and completes the match.
Crespo-Pérez gave the case a broader dimension at the press conference announcing the appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, calling the re-officiating of a match that has already ended "unprecedented." He suggested the case could reach beyond African football to raise a question about the future of the game and its rules.
Senegal may also try to draw a line between the 2025 final and previous cases in which a team flatly refused to complete a match, among them the second leg of the 2019 CAF Champions League final between Espérance of Tunisia and Wydad of Morocco. Their players, they will stress, did return to the pitch and resumed play.
Morocco demands the literal application of the regulations
Morocco, by contrast, rest their defence on a direct reading of Articles 82 and 84 of the Africa Cup of Nations regulations. A team is deemed to have lost if it refuses to play or leaves the pitch before the end of the match without the referee's permission, with the possibility of a 3-0 defeat and disqualification depending on the circumstances.
The violation, Morocco argue, was already complete the moment the Senegal players left the pitch. Their subsequent return does not undo what had taken place before it.
Fouzi Lekjaa, president of the Royal Moroccan Football Federation, backed this approach in statements to "Jeune Afrique" magazine, saying the rules of football and the legal rules governing the match "were obstructed and violated" by the opponent.
He added that the International Federation of Association Football changed its regulations after the incident, so that a player who leaves the pitch without permission now faces a red card. That, he argued, supports the Moroccan view.
One more specific detail strengthens the Moroccan case: at one moment the number of Senegal players on the pitch dropped to just three, while the Laws of the Game require at least seven players for either side to continue.
On this basis, the Moroccan defence may argue the violation was complete before the Senegal players returned, and that resuming the match later cannot erase the effect of what happened during the stoppage.
Does resuming the match protect its result?
This is where the case reaches its most sensitive point. The matter is not only whether Senegal breached the regulations, but what punishment that breach deserves.
Senegal did leave the pitch. Yet the match was resumed, ran to the final whistle, and produced a winner on the grass.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport must therefore weigh the principle of strict application of the regulations against the principle of proportionality in penalties and the preservation of the integrity of the sporting result.
The central question runs as follows: does leaving the pitch without the referee's permission automatically trigger Articles 82 and 84 and the annulment of the result, even if the team later returns, resumes play under the referee's management and wins? Or does the return, the resumption and the final whistle protect the sporting result, leaving only other disciplinary penalties for those responsible for the incident?
This point may hold the key to the awaited ruling in Lausanne. The case is not only about whether Senegal's conduct broke the regulations, but about whether that breach justifies the harshest possible punishment: wiping out a result settled on the pitch and handing the title to the opponent.