October 7 – A letter sent to members of the executive committee of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) and which has been circulated around member associations has caused concern and fear in Africa’s national associations over the ongoing future of CAF, and Africa’s right to govern its own football eco-system within Africa.
The letter warns African leaders “not (to) be accomplices in the disappearance of CAF”, that they have been “duped” by FIFA president Gianni Infantino and that the CAF Super League is not based on credible or sustainable revenue and will only cannibalize the CAF Champions League and the CAF Cup.
It warns African football’s member nations and their representative not to be “complicit in a suicide”.
Within African football there has been a rapidly growing feeling that FIFA’s dominating administrative presence on the continent and the abject failure to successfully launch new competitions while seeing existing competitions lose revenue and status, could spell the end of CAF.
That would be the end of Africans governing their own game on their own continent via their own elected representatives. Many argue that is already the case and that FIFA’s heavy handed executive has subjugated Africa’s independence and right to govern itself via unfulfilled promises, poor and non-transparent decision making, and incentivising or bullying African leaders to fall into line.
FIFA’s presence in Africa has been aggressively felt under Infantino’s FIFA regime who have made a catalogue of poor interventions in the continent from the heavily FIFA-supported election of now-disgraced Ahmad Ahmad to the CAF presidency, the subsequent disastrous insertion of former FIFA general secretary Fatma Samoura as some kind of special envoy to the continent, the long term failure to find an equivalent or better financial replacement for Lagardere’s marketing contract which was cancelled at the behest of FIFA, the centralisation of national broadcast rights under the failed promises of better commercial deals all round, and more recently the inability to launch a vibrant and sustainable Super League on the continent.
The letter sent to all of Africa’s senior football officials, and seen by Insideworldfootball via a CAF executive committee member, is written by African media consultant and football commentator Mamadou Gaye.
Referencing the cases made against former CAF president Isa Hayatou for his failure to tender the Lagardere contract in favour of a private negotiation, the letter says: “What is happening today is worse, the negotiation (for CAF Super League sponsorship) was done unilaterally by Infantino and Motsepe’s (CAF president Patrice Motsepe) presence was only symbolic.”
Referring to sponsorship negotiations, Gaye says: “No public call for tenders has been launched, it will only be a matter of symbolically validating an agreement that has already been concluded by the current Executive Committee without even giving them any financial details or a formal commitment that this agreement would be maintained over time if this exceptional sponsor were to withdraw.”
Gaye warns that with “the Super League, we will cannibalize the CAF Champions League and the CAF CUP which will be worthless in 1, 2 years.
“And if the Super League is not maintained over time for at least 5 years, the CAF will no longer have any financially valid competition and Infantino will already be retired.
“We will only have our eyes to cry with.”
Gaye says “legal action as was the case today with Hayatou could be taken against Motsepe, his executive committee and Mosengo Veron.
“Infantino will not risk anything because he will not have signed or officially approved anything
“And CAF will disappear because in addition to the current serious financial crisis, the last current blow with the Super League will have been fatal for it.”
Gaye tells Africans to “wake up, the future of African football by Africans is in mortal danger”. He argues that CAF should not be used in Infantino’s personal war with UEFA over the creation of a Super League, something that Infantino supported privately in Europe but was forced to publicly disclaim.
“This fight of Infantino is not ours, so let us not accept to be his guinea pigs with the result of the disappearance of CAF,” says Gaye.
“Members of the executive committee, Presidents of the federations, free women and men of Africa, react before it is too late, so that history does not remember one day that you were complicit in a suicide, that of African football and CAF.”
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