CAF Confederation Cup
HOW RANGERS’ FOES WILL EMERGE AT CAF CONFEDERATION CUP
BY APESIN ADEMOLA.
Rangers will know their opponents in the group stage of this season’s CAF Confederation Cup when the draw is conducted in Cairo this Monday from 1pm (West African time).
The Flying Antelopes, who won the Nigerian Federation Cup last year to qualify for this competition, are placed in the least section (Pot 4) along with AS Otôho (Congo Republic), Ashante Kotoko SC (Ghana) and Hassania Agadir (Morocco).
They are guaranteed to avoid those three teams in the group stage.
Rangers’ three group stage opponents can come from either defending champions Étoile du Sahel (Tunisia), Zamalek (Egypt), ZESCO United (Zambia) or Raja Casablanca (Morocco), all top seeds in the draw.
One other team will
also come from Pot 2 which features Al-Hilal (Sudan), CS Sfaxien
(Tunisia), RS Berkane (Morocco) and Gor Mahia (Kenya).
In Pot 3, which will also produce a team for Rangers’ group, are Nkana (Zambia), NA Hussein Dey (Algeria), Petro de Luanda (Angola) and Ranger (Burkina Faso).
Raja Casablanca, the defending champions, entered the competition this time in the first round where they dispatched Gabon’s Cercle Mbéri Sportif 5-1 aggregate before eliminating African Stars of Namibia 2-1 aggregate in the play-off round. Raja also won the title in 2003.
On their way to lifting the trophy last month, Raja stopped Nigeria’s representatives Enyimba in the last four by winning both in Aba and in Casablanca 3-1 overall.
Étoile du Sahel, the team with the highest ranking among the group stage qualifiers, stopped the march of Plateau United, the then Nigerian champions, in the first round of the 2017/18 CAF Champions League 4-3 aggregate.
But Enyimba had eliminated Étoile du Sahel in the second round of the 2015/16 CAF Champions League. Both teams ended the two legs 3-3 but the People’s Elephant triumphed 4-3 penalties only to get kicked out in the group stage.
That CAF Champions League elimination of Enyimba was the most recent encounter between Zamalek, another of team in Pot 1, and any Nigerian team. The Egyptian side won their two fixtures against Enyimba 1-0 either way to leave Enyimba at the foot of the group’s table.
Gor Mahia, one of the teams in Pot 2, fell to Nigerian champions Lobi Stars on away goal difference in the first round of this season’s CAF Champions League, which led to their relegation to the Confederation Cup. Having survived the play-off round, the draw may pitch the Kenya side against yet another Nigerian team – Rangers.
For Sudan’s Al-Hilal, who are in Pot 2, they stopped Akwa United on away goal rule in the playoff round of the 2017/18 CAF Confederation Cup.
In the 2012/13 CAF Confederation Cup, Rangers were to face CS Sfaxien of Tunisia in the playoff round. The Nigerian team won the first leg at home 1-0 but CAF ruled that they fielded an ineligible player in the second leg and therefore got disqualified.
The group stage will run from February 3 to March 17 with six matches played in each of the four groups.
The top two teams in each of group will play the quarterfinals in April.
The two-legged finals will hold in May.
CAF Confederation Cup
CAF adjudges Morocco’s Youssef Mehri’s goal as the fastest in football history
Moroccan club, Renaissance de Berkane, beat their Algerian counterparts, CS Constantine, 4-0 in the first leg of the CAF Confederation Cup semi-finals at the weekend.
The game got off to a dream start for the Moroccan club as it took Youssef Mehri less than a minute to open the scoring in the big win against the Algerians.
Officially, the goal is recorded to have been scored after 13 seconds.
In a post on X (formerly Twitter), CAF remarks: “Youssef Mehri goes straight into the history books. The RS Berkane striker scores the fastest goal ever scored in the CAF Cup.”
A deeper search by Sports Village Square indicates that a Nigerian player, Paul Onuachu, had previously scored a faster goal, but not in a CAF Cup duel.
The basketball player-like footballer scored his first international goal in a 1-0 defeat of Egypt on 26 March 2019.
The goal inflicted Nigeria’s first defeat on Egypt in 29 years. But more significant was the timing of the goal. Onuachu, within eight seconds of kick-off, undoubtedly entered the record books as the second fastest goal in international football records after that of Germany’s Lukas Podolsk, who scored after six seconds in a friendly against Ecuador in 2013.
Fans had hardly settled down at the Stephen Keshi Stadium in Asaba for the Nigeria versus Egypt match when Onuachu released a thunderous shot that turned out to be the match’s decider.
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The Renaissance Sportive de Berkane delegation will travel to Algeria this Friday to face CS Constantine in the CAF Cup. Tension may be building up for the potentially explosive confrontation that could have a build-up from last year’s fixtures of the Moroccan club and another Algerian outfit, USM Algiers, in the CAF Confederation Cup.
A Moroccan news outlet, Sport.le360, reports that a Tunisian airline will operate the direct flight between Oujda-Angad Airport, which is located about 12 kilometres north of Oujda and about 600 kilometres northeast of Casablanca, near the Algerian border and Constantine Mohamed Boudiaf International Airport.
Last year, political differences between Morocco and Algeria scuttled similar semi-final clashes between clubs of both countries.
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The Court of Arbitration for Sport on Wednesday ruled in favour of the Algerian football federation in a row over a map of Morocco on shirts worn by Renaissance Berkane in the 2024 CAF Confederation Cup.
Algerian club USM Alger were kicked out of last year’s competition after both legs of their semi-final against Berkane were cancelled because of a diplomatic dispute.
Neither match took place as USMA and the Algerian authorities objected to a map of Morocco on the Berkane shirts which included Western Sahara.
Algeria cut diplomatic ties with North African neighbours Morocco in 2021, partly over the Western Sahara issue.
The former Spanish colony is largely controlled by Morocco but claimed by the Algeria-backed Polisario Front, which seeks the territory’s independence.
The Confederation of African Football awarded Berkane a 3-0 victory for both legs of the semi-final.
CAF at the time responded to an appeal by the Algerian FA by ruling in favour of Berkane, saying the club had been wearing the same jerseys since the start of the tournament.
But the Algerian FA took the case to sport’s highest court in Switzerland, which determined that the shirts in question were “contrary to CAF regulations, as they display a territorial map that is of a political nature.”
“The image of a map of Morocco including Western Sahara on the shirts of RS Berkane depicts a message, a demonstration or propaganda of a political nature as it represents the assertion of a territorial dispute that is contested and still unresolved as of today,” CAS said in a statement.
“By the laws of the game of the International Football Association Board, it is prohibited to convey any content of a political nature on all equipment, including shirts.”
CAS added that the initial decision by CAF to “maintain the approval of the shirts is annulled”, but the court said that it would have no effect on the results of the tournament.
Egypt’s Zamalek beat Berkane on away goals in the final.
-AFP
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