CAF Confederation Cup
Moroccan armed forces club FAR favourites to lift Confederation Cup
Moroccan armed forces club and former African champions, FAR Rabat will be the team to beat in the CAF Confederation Cup knockout stage this season.
Coached by former France indoor football international Fernando da Cruz, the Black Devils have won seven and drawn four of 12 qualifying and group matches en route to the quarter-finals.
The 22 goals they scored have been shared among 13 players with the four of Cape Verde international Diney Borges making him the unlikely leading scorer as he is a centre-back.
FAR are the only quarter-finalists this season in the African equivalent of the UEFA Europa League who have won a CAF competition.
They achieved two firsts for Morocco by the winning the African Cup of Champions Clubs — later renamed the CAF Champions League — in 1985 and the Confederation Cup 20 years later.
But after finishing runners-up in the Confederation Cup a year after winning it, FAR faded as a force in Africa while Casablanca clubs Raja and Wydad won CAF competitions.
Last year, the Rabat club did not even make the group stage of the Confederation Cup, losing home and away to JS Kabylie of Algeria in the second qualifying round.
They return to Algeria this weekend for the first leg of a quarter-final against USM Alger who, along with FAR and Pyramids of Egypt, have previously reached the knockout stage.
The other hopefuls — Marumo Gallants of South Africa, US Monastir of Tunisia, ASEC Mimosas of the Ivory Coast, Rivers United of Nigeria and Young Africans of Tanzania — are first-time qualifiers.
Should FAR eliminate USM, whose line-up includes 2022 African Nations Championship leading scorer Aymen Mahious, they would confront Monastir or ASEC for a place in the final.
The Tunisian and Ivorian sides have lost only once each in eight African outings and boast regular scorers in Boubacar Traore and Aubin Kramo respectively.
Pyramids are competing in the Confederation Cup for the fourth straight season having reached the 2020 final, the semi-finals the following year and the 2022 quarter-finals.
Their multi-national line-up includes veteran Tunisian Fakhreddine Ben Youssef, the leading scorer in the competition with six goals, including a hat-trick.
They face Marumo, who have won seven of 10 matches in Africa but only five of 26 in the South African Premiership, leaving them battling to avoid relegation.
Ranga Chivaviro stars for the South African outfit, with his five Confederation Cup goals placing him joint second behind Ben Youssef in the Golden Boot race.
Ghanaian Paul Acquah shares second place with Chivaviro and Rivers will rely heavily on him against Young Africans in their quest to become the first title-holders from Nigeria.
-AFP
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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