Morocco Awarded 2025 AFCON Title After CAF Overturns Final
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- CAF overturned the result of the 2025 AFCON final and declared Morocco winners, recording the result as 3-0 after Senegal was found to have infringed Article 82 of AFCON regulations by leaving the field without the referee's authorisation.
- Senegal had beaten Morocco 1-0 on 18 January via Pape Gueye's extra-time goal, but the match was overshadowed when the squad walked off in protest of a penalty awarded in the eighth minute of stoppage time; the players returned 17 minutes later and Brahim Diaz's Panenka was saved by Edouard Mendy.
- The Senegalese Football Federation announced it would appeal the decision to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, calling it "an unfair, unprecedented and unacceptable decision which brings discredit to African football."
- Morocco's FRMF filed the original appeal, stating its decision was "never intended to challenge the sporting performance of the teams" but sought "application of the competition's regulations."
- Pape Thiaw, Senegal's head coach, later accepted he should not have ordered his team off the field and had reacted "in the heat of the moment," with Sadio Mane staying on the pitch to urge teammates to finish the game.
- Morocco parted company with coach Walid Regragui on 5 March, four months before the World Cup finals, after he had labelled Senegal's actions "shameful" in his post-match news conference.
- Senegal's players had already celebrated with the Afcon trophy on a bus parade before the administrative ruling, as highlighted by journalist Maher Mezahi, who said the decision cannot "erase the final 16 minutes of that match."
Why it matters: Senegal won the final on the pitch, celebrated with the trophy, and held a bus parade — only to have the result erased months later by CAF's appeal board, which applied Article 82's automatic 3-0 forfeiture for unauthorized walk-offs. With Senegal's federation taking the case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, the dispute now becomes a test of whether administrative regulation overrides what actually happened on the field.
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