Football fans on Twitter disapproved of CAF’s decision, arguing that fans will not be able to travel to watch the matches due to lack of adequate air transportation.
Rabat – The president of the Confederation of African Football, Ahmad Ahmad, has declared that both the Champions League and CAF Confederations Cup finals will be played on a single match, instead of two legs, one home and one away match.
The decision was made after a meeting of the executive committee and was announced today by CAF’s president on his official Twitter account.
African football fans on Twitter, however, criticized the CAF’s decision, arguing that finals with a single match will see low fan attendance as the case at the ongoing 2019 Africa Cup of Nations (CAF) in Egypt.
Fans also said that Africa lacks adequate transporting services and is a poor continent whose residents cannot even travel to neighboring countries. Football fans also considered the long distance between nations as a factor that would discourage them from attending away matches.
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The decision will come into effect starting from the next season.
On June 5, the CAF executive committee decided to replay the 2nd leg of the African Champions League finals between Morocco’s Wydad Athletic Club (WAC) and Tunisia’s Esperance Sportive de Tunis (EST).
The final game saw refereeing mistakes and mismanagement by CAF, resulting in a win for theTunisian team. Frustrated over the course of the final game, and disagreeing with the CAF executive committee decision to replay the match, the WAC president has reached out to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).
The CAS announced, in an official statement shared on July 13, that it would deliver a verdict on the EST-Wydad dispute on July 31.