By Satish Sekar © Satish Sekar (December 30^th 2025)

Date-juggling

FIFA president, Gianni Infantino’s decision to impose the Club World Cup (CWC) in the summer had dire consequences. Only 32 clubs in the world benefited – and as for the rest? How did the various Confederations and Football Federations of the world not see that only the very few would benefit from the CWC? And how did they fail to grasp the AFCON message?

If the CWC was so important, why didn’t they organise it for the winter? That would have caused minimum disruption to the rest of the world’s clubs. FIFA’s conduct has been at Africa’s expense. Morocco was best suited to host AFCON in the summer just past as it wished to do.

It could have been painless – should have been. Instead, blatant disrespect for AFCON was demonstrated. No other confederation has been told that a mere week is enough to prepare. How many training sessions and friendly and practice matches can be organised in that time? And it was obvious that many clubs would lose players to the AFCON during their seasons if Morocco was not supported in its aims.

Europe’s governing body, UEFA, and other confederations chose to back the CWC. Incredibly, many European clubs were unaware that Morocco had wanted to host AFCON in the summer. If they had known, perhaps they would have placed the blame on this one where it belonged and not on Morocco.

If they had supported Morocco when it mattered, they would not have lost any players to this AFCON. The loss of players to AFCON should therefore be laid at their door not Morocco’s or CAF. Rather than blame AFCON, perhaps they should question themselves and their confederation. After all, how could the revamped CWC benefit any but the few and at the expense of the many? 

A Walk Down History’s Path

Morocco’s scheduled second AFCON – it withdrew at the last minute due to the Ebola Crisis – was scheduled for a decade ago. Former Moroccan great, Zaki Badou, told me a few years that Morocco needed to host it quickly – he had wanted Morocco to take over from Cameroon, which had faced problems of its second hosting – it eventually hosted the edition scheduled for 2021 in 2022.

Badou’s reasons for wanting Morocco to host that edition was that he knew that the Atlas Lions had a window of opportunity for the best chance of hosting and winning that was closing. It is still closing. It is near the end of the optimum window of opportunity fr the Atlas Lions. It would have been more than a travesty if Morocco missed its best chance after the fantastic example that it has set the rest of Africa in terms of organising and developing its football for more than a decade. That alone should be encouraged. Morocco has shed its blood to get this point. It deserves to host AFCON within its optimum window of opportunity. Africa needs to absorb the Morocco example – its member federations need to emulate Morocco’s example and for that to happen Morocco needs to be encouraged and assisted.

Already, as is inevitable in football, new players have to be incorporated into the team as older ones makes way – some will miss their chance, the longer they wait. Qatar’s World Cup of 2022 emphasised the Morocco message – they were Africa’s best and by some distance. The Atlas Lions were the first African team – AFRICAN – to reach the semi-final of the FIFA World Cup[1] and were in their prime. Imagine if they had hosted in 2022 as Badou wanted, but it was Cameroon’s turn – they had waited 50 years to host AFCON again.

All this explains why Morocco wanted to host sooner rather than later – the clock was ticking. Although it comes with territory, especially now, Walid Regragui knows that Morocco expects him to deliver that second star for the jersey of the Atlas Lions after a wait of almost half a century.

Nevertheless, Morocco should have received the support of the football world to host when it wanted to. Shamefully, that did not happen.

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[1] I stress that it was the FIFA World Cup for a reason. One of the four stars that Uruguay has on its shirt is for winning the Olympic Games Football Tournament of 1928. That competition in Amsterdam’s only Olympiad involved higher quality participants than the inaugural FIFA World Cup – for example both losing semi-finalists in that Olympiad, Italy and Egypt did not go to Uruguay’s World Cup and nor did some other European nations. Therefore, there is no question that the quality of participants in 1928 was greater than that of 1930 and the 1928 competition was the last Olympic Football Tournament that was organised by FIFA before there was a FIFA World Cup. It should also be noted that FIFA had rejected the idea of organising its own World Cup previously as it saw no need to do so. That changed at its 1929 FIFA Congress in 1929 in Barçelona. As the quality of the football was better and the competitions were organised by FIFA, the 1924 and 1928 Olympic Games Football Tournaments should be recognised as unofficial World Cups by FIFA. That would also mean that the first African nation to reach a semi-final of a World Cup would be Egypt in 1928 (that is my personal opinion too and I make no apology for holding it). It would also make a quirky fact – Uruguay would become the first nation to win three World Cups in a row, and do so at the inaugural FIFA World Cup.