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Rabat – Algeria appears determined to defy a ruling of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) after Algerian authorities prevented a Moroccan club from playing a decisive CAF Confederation Cup game due to the team’s jerseys featuring a full map of Morocco.
Reports in the Algerian media suggest Algeria’s football federation has submitted a complaint with FIFA’s ethics committee against CAF, accusing the governing body of African football of “not respecting its regulation in the case involving USM Alger and RS Berkane.”
The USM Alger-RS Berkane game was scheduled last week on Sunday as part of the first leg of the CAF Confederation Cup. But the match was eventually canceled due to Algeria’s regime’s controversial decision to confiscate the Moroccan club’s CAF-approved equipment in a bid to challenge Morocco’s territorial integrity.
CAF’s ruling, which came after the Algerian Football Federation refused to comply with its request to return RS Berkane’s “legitimate” jerseys, declared that the Moroccan club had won the abandoned semi-final first leg 3-0.
Algeria has responded to the CAF verdict by lodging a complaint against the continental footballing authority, citing FIFA’s regulation that a “decorative element must not represent the face or identity of a person, the shape of a country or territory, or give the impression thereof.”
Read also:FRMF Confirms RS Berkane’s Victory, Potential Additional Sanctions Against Algeria
Walid Sadi, the president of the Algerian federation, reportedly traveled to Lausanne on Thursday with five lawyers from a firm specialized in such cases, according to La Gazette du Fennec.
In addition to the RS Berkane controversy, Algeria also recently politicized the Arab Handball Championship by requesting its national handball team to boycott the competition in protest at the Moroccan team’s equipment featuring a full map of Morocco.
The Algerian regime has taken its Morocco-bashing game to new, unprecedented heights since its August 2021 decision to unilaterally sever “all ties” with Morocco.
Initially, the Algerian regime accused Morocco of being the “invisible hand” behind “hostile” developments aimed at “destabilizing” Algeria, particularly the wildfires that ravaged northern Algeria in the summer of 2021.
According to observers, the goal of such unproven accusations was to rally Algerians behind their supposedly besieged government as the country experienced a series of social and economic crises.
Faced with an increasingly irreversible pro-Moroccan momentum on the Western Sahara question, Algeria has most recently turned to the politicization of sports to settle scores with Morocco and challenge the country’s territorial integrity.
