EDITORIAL: CAF's Treble Standards

The one-year ban slapped on the Accra Sports Stadium by the Confederation of African Football (CAF) and other punishments handed down to those perceived to have contributed to the December 17 champion league finals incident has been greeted with mixed reactions by many soccer fans.

The ban precludes the CAF Champions league and Super Cup title holders Accra Hearts of Oak from using the nation's Wembley in their African campaign which starts in earnest in April this year.

This followed crowd disturbances experienced during the finals of the CAF Champions league match between Hearts of Oak and Esperance of Tunisia last December, which led to a 30 minutes hold-up. The Esperance goal tender Ouaer El-Chokri who inflicted an injury on himself ostensibly to get the referee to end the match was virtually left off with a one-year ban, while some officials of Esperance who tried to coerce the South African referee to bring proceedings to an end were suspended and fined. Most connoisseurs were expecting a life ban from CAF due to the gravity of El-Chokri's act.

The fourth referee who joined officials of Esperance in calling for the postponement of the game also had his name struck from the list of referees recommended by CAF for the 2002 world cup.

Grievious as El-Chokri's action was CAF ruled that his ban would only affect his club engagements, which invariably makes him eligible to star for the Tunisian national team in its preparation for the 2002 World Cup.

Hearts of Oak though were told by CAF to play their matches at a venue that is as least twenty miles from the Accra stadium. Since Hearts can't host international matches at the Kaneshie Sports Complex or the El-Wak stadium, which are the closest venues to the Accra stadium, it would be forced to honour their home matches in Kumasi.

With the league resuming just at the time Heart's African campaign begins one would be dead on in predicting the kind of chaos this situation would lead to.

Even though the Chronicle is not seeking to justify stadium violence and for that matter the unfortunate incident that transpired at the Accra stadium on that eventful day it is our opinion that Hearts of Oak has been handed the wrong end of the stick.

We see the one-year ban imposed on the Esperance keeper as not matching the gravity of his action which was calculated and contrived to bring the game into disrepute. It is our reading that Chokri has been treated with kids gloves for other reasons which we can not fathom but which are very unpopular and quite unfortunate.

Two years ago a similar ban was imposed on former Hearts Number one keeper James Nanor for spitting on a match official during a Champions league match with the Shooting Stars of Nigeria. The ban was extended to Nanor's commitments with the Black Stars where he was then the number two goalkeeper. The Black Stars were then preparing for the CAN 2000 Ghana-Nigeria.

Even though, this decision indeed has left a sour taste in the mouth of many it has also fuelled suspicions of the existence of a mafia of sorts in CAF. The anglophone group in CAF have always been dominated by their Francophone counterparts and the only way to bridge this divide is to grow or support more of our people to win seats in the CAF executive.

Most of those in the CAF executive committee particularly our Francophone and Arab brethren have worked themselves to these positions to advance the cause of their respective national federations. That is why we always see match officials who represent Africa at international tournaments coming from these countries.

The immediate past GFA Chairman Alhaji Jawula is one such person who should be given the push and encouragement to get into the CAF executive committee in order to cater for our interest.

Crime and punishment should be carried out to its logical conclusion and it should be the operative rule in this particular case.