Who owns the ball — CAF or Senegal?

When I was growing up, avenues for news were scarce. Sports news, even scarcer.

There was no internet buzzing in your pocket, no television channels arguing endlessly over offside calls deep into the night. If you wanted news, you waited patiently for the newspaper.

Thankfully, my father was a devoted subscriber.

Every evening, except Sundays, he would arrive home with two familiar companions tucked under his arm: the Daily Graphic — which, during the era of the Provisional National Defence Council, briefly wore the revolutionary name “People’s Daily Graphic” — and The Ghanaian Times.

The other two — The Mirror and The Spectator — came with these papers every Saturday morning.

Many times on Saturdays, my siblings and I would collect the papers ourselves, the morning air filled with the promise of stories waiting to be read.

Then came my evening assignment. I was in Class One when my father began what, looking back, was a peculiar but brilliant literacy programme. He would hand me the newspapers and say, in a tone that brooked no negotiation: “Read.”

The words were enormous, stubborn creatures on the page. Some looked friendly.

Others were intimidating beasts.

Whenever I ran into one of those monsters and got stuck, my father would either pronounce the word for me or instruct, with fatherly mercy, “Skip it.

Go to the next word.” So I skipped.

Sometimes I skipped a word. Sometimes two.

Occasionally — and quite shamelessly — an entire sentence disappeared under my reading.

But I soldiered on, proudly pronouncing the dependable two-, three-, and four-letter words.

Understanding what I was reading was a luxury at that stage. Survival was the real objective. Yet, something stuck.

Names. Especially football names.

Those newspapers introduced me to the giants of Ghanaian football: Asante Kotoko, Accra Hearts of Oak, Great Olympics, Sekondi Hasaacas, Cornerstones, BA United, and later the exciting rise of Okwawu United.

And, of course, the rallying cry that echoed with Okwawu United was “Asaase Aban, Yente Gyae!”

Manchester United  
   

Those were the days when Ghanaian football dominated our imagination.

Foreign clubs barely existed in our universe. But one foreign name somehow slipped through the cracks of my early reading adventures — Manchester United FC.

Among us children, when it was time to organise a match on the dusty field, the most coveted declaration was shouted with dramatic urgency: “We are Manchester United!”

Whoever shouted it first claimed the glory.

The poor fellows on the other side had to settle for whatever team name remained floating in the air.

But before the shouting even began, there was the more pressing question: where was the ball?

In those days we did not always have a proper football.

The older boys would go and tap rubber fluid from nearby rubber trees.

With impressive village engineering, they moulded the sticky substance into something that looked — from a generous distance — like a football.

Occasionally, one lucky boy would appear with an actual football.

That boy instantly became everything — club owner, coach, referee, and sometimes even the entire football association.

The team automatically took whatever name he declared.

If he said, “Today we are Manchester United,” nobody dared challenge the constitution of the club. After all, you wanted to play.

Team selection followed a predictable pattern.

The bigger boys and the better players were drafted first to the owner’s side. 

The rest of us prayed quietly to be chosen before the teams were full. 

There were also unwritten economic regulations.

If you had bought sweets or groundnuts and failed to share with the owner of the ball, your chances of being selected were dangerously slim.

Football diplomacy started early in life.

And woe unto you if you tackled the owner too hard.

He would simply pick up his ball, tuck it under his arm, and declare the match finished.

Game over. No appeal. No VAR. No FIFA.

Just raw grassroots governance.

Those childhood matches were chaotic, unfair at times, and governed by the whims of whoever owned the ball.

Yet even in that disorder, one rule was sacred: a match was decided on the field.

Loyalty

Time, however, has a way of rearranging passions. In my adult life, football and I have drifted into a polite distance.

I hardly follow club competitions closely. I barely know many of the modern players whose names now race across television screens and social media feeds.

My friends know my peculiar relationship with football.

I support every national team and every local club when they play outside their country, even if it is only a friendly match. Patriotism, after all, does not require league tables.

But when two local teams face each other, I support none.

The same rule applies when two foreign clubs are playing.

However — and this is where my friends begin laughing — if a Ghanaian player appears in a foreign club, my loyalty shifts instantly to that team.

Should two Ghanaians appear on opposing sides, I simply watch which one plays better and pledge my support accordingly. It becomes even funnier during the match.

I may loudly support one side, only to abandon them the very moment the other team scores.

My friends find this betrayal hilarious. I call it flexibility.

Given this curious neutrality, many people who know me would be surprised to see me writing about football today. But recent events have pulled even reluctant observers like me into the debate.

The controversy surrounding the decision of the Confederation of African Football to overturn the result of the 2005 Africa Cup of Nations final between the Senegal national football team and the Morocco national football team has raised serious questions about fairness in football governance.

CAF’s Appeals Committee ruled that Senegal forfeited the match after their players briefly walked off the pitch in protest during the game.

The governing body relied on regulations stating that a team that refuses to continue playing can lose the match by default.

On the surface, that might sound reasonable. But the deeper one examines the situation, the more troubling it becomes.

Contradiction

Under the Laws of the Game written by the International Football Association Board and applied globally under FIFA, the referee holds absolute authority during a match.

If a team truly refuses to continue playing, the referee should suspend the match, allow time for compliance, and ultimately abandon the match.

There are precedents.

In a World Cup qualifier between the Brazil national football team and the Argentina national football team in 2021, the match in São Paulo was halted and eventually abandoned after a dramatic intervention by health authorities.

The matter was later handled administratively by FIFA. In another case in Argentina’s domestic league involving Boca Juniors and Gimnasia y Esgrima La Plata, players refused to continue after a penalty decision.

The referee abandoned the match, and the authorities later awarded the result by forfeit.

The pattern is clear: refusal leads to abandonment; abandonment leads to disciplinary ruling. But the Senegal situation does not appear to follow that sequence.

The referee did not abandon the match.

The players returned.

The match resumed.

The match ended on the field. That creates a fundamental contradiction.

How can a team be said to have “refused to continue playing” when the match itself continued and produced a result?

Football has always maintained a delicate balance between the authority of the referee and the disciplinary powers of governing bodies.

When that balance tilts too far in one direction, the credibility of the game begins to wobble. CAF’s decision risks creating precisely that uncertainty.

It is therefore unsurprising that many observers believe the dispute may eventually reach the Court of Arbitration for Sport, the global tribunal that settles complex sporting disputes.

For someone like me, the issue appears surprisingly straightforward.

Football, like the games we played on our dusty fields, should ultimately be decided on the field. 

Even our childhood football had a certain rough justice.

The owner of the ball might have been unfair, but at least everyone knew when the match had ended.

In this case, however, the rules appear to have changed after the final whistle.

And that is why many of us cannot help feeling that Senegal has been handed a rather raw deal.

The writer is the Night Editor of Daily Graphic

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