Senegal's Stripped AFCON Title Goes Before Sport's Highest Court Thursday

A fight over who actually won the Africa Cup of Nations heads to a Swiss courtroom this week. The Court of Arbitration for Sport is set to hear Senegal's appeal on Thursday, October 8, at its headquarters in Lausanne, according to Al Jazeera and Morocco World News. The hearing is scheduled to start at 9:30 a.m. local time and run into the afternoon.

Senegal beat host Morocco 1-0 after extra time in the AFCON 2025 final in Rabat on January 18, 2026, with Pape Gueye scoring the decisive goal, according to africasoccer. Late in regulation, with the score still level, officials awarded Morocco a penalty. Several Senegal players walked off the pitch in protest and headed toward the dressing room, staying off the field for roughly 14 minutes before returning, according to Al Jazeera and Reuters reporting carried by Vanguard Nigeria.

Morocco missed the penalty. The match went to extra time, and Senegal won it.

That should have been the end of it. It wasn't. Roughly two months later, in March 2026, CAF's Appeal Board ruled that Senegal had forfeited the match by walking off the pitch without the referee's authorization, overturned the result, and declared Morocco champions by a 3-0 scoreline, according to multiple reports including Al Jazeera and Morocco World News. Senegal's football federation filed its CAS appeal on March 25, seeking to get the title back.

What the panel has to decide

The case, registered as TAS 2026/A/12295, will be heard by a three-member panel chaired by French law professor Gérald Simon, with Italian professor Luigi Fumagalli and German professor Ulrich Haas, according to Morocco World News and africasoccer. Proceedings will be conducted in French, and the hearing will be closed to media because, per CAS, neither party requested it be made public.

The legal question boils down to one clause in CAF's tournament regulations: a team that "refuses to play or leaves the ground before the regular end of the match without the authorisation of the referee" is to be considered the loser and eliminated, according to the text cited by Al Jazeera and MSNBC's wire coverage.

Senegal is expected to argue two things. First, that the Laws of the Game treat in-match officiating decisions as final and not subject to after-the-fact reversal. Second, that a 14-minute protest followed by a return to play is not the same as abandoning the match, and the regulation shouldn't be stretched to cover it.

Morocco is expected to argue the opposite: that leaving the field without the referee's permission triggers the forfeiture rule regardless of whether the players came back, and that the letter of the regulation doesn't carve out exceptions for temporary walkoffs.

Players walking off mid-match over a disputed call is exactly the kind of conduct governing bodies write forfeiture rules to discourage. But CAF reviewing the result two months after the final whistle, after the trophy had already been handed out, raises its own question. If a rule change or reinterpretation can undo a result that long after the fact, how much can any result be trusted until the appeals window closes?

CAS has been explicit that nobody should expect a quick answer. "After the hearing, the panel will start its deliberations. At this stage, CAS cannot state when a final decision will be rendered but it will not be on the date of the hearing," the court said in a statement cited by Al Jazeera, Vanguard Nigeria, and MSNBC.

A photo from a Senegal-Gambia friendly in March showed Senegal's Krepin Diatta holding the AFCON trophy, according to an image credited to Reuters and published by Al Jazeera, though the exact circumstances and timing relative to CAF's ruling aren't detailed in the available reporting.

Qualification for the 2027 AFCON has already started, with Senegal playing its qualifiers regardless of which name sits on the 2025 trophy, according to Al Jazeera. CAF, Morocco's federation and Senegal's federation will all present arguments Thursday. No date has been set for when CAS will actually rule, and until it does, the continent's reigning AFCON champion remains an open question on paper.