Easy
passage lost
By
Inas Mazhar
Not for the first time, the African Football Confederation (CAF) and Egyptian officials are at each other's throat.
The latest dispute concerns the recent announcement by CAF that it had scrapped plans to select five African teams for the 2006 World Cup through the African Nations Cup (ANC) to be held in Cairo the same year. The decision was a U-turn from CAF's earlier stand, taken in January 2002 by its general assembly in Mali, that the top five teams in the ANC would automatically qualify for the World Cup.
After putting down bids for the ANC from the Ivory Coast, Algeria and Libya, and following the sudden withdrawal of South Africa and Morocco, Egypt got the nod.
Egypt, which has made two World Cup appearances, last made it to the global showpiece in 1990. By hosting the 2006 ANC, Egypt hoped to kill two birds with one stone: win the ANC trophy for the fifth time and more importantly qualify for the World Cup. But CAF's turnaround changed all that.
In defending itself, the CAF said it had received a memo from FIFA, the world's governing body in the sport, on 25 November chiding the CAF for taking it upon itself to decide on a new World Cup qualification format without consulting it first.
The CAF also said that many African nations realised they would lose out on much-needed television and marketing revenues if there was a significantly reduced qualifying programme.
The CAF has since introduced a complex qualification procedure whereby one set of continental qualifiers will decide which teams will be going to which competition.
CAF officials said they still may make minor modifications to the process but they have agreed to the principle, i.e., Egypt will be forced to work if it wants to qualify for the 2006 World Cup.
CAF's defence is shaky. Why, for one, introduce something if you cannot implement it? And why was the economic interests of African nations not taken into account?
All CAF general assembly resolutions go into effect three months after being passed, meaning that in this case the resolution should have become law on 16 April 2002 after which it must be adhered to.
Conspiracy theories are rampant, especially since South Africa and Morocco suddenly bowed out from bidding for the 2006 edition after they were dying to host it. Did they know something we did not?
Meanwhile, the Egyptian public and the Football Association are outraged and are demanding that the country withdraws from the CAF even though its headquarters is in Cairo.
There is a strong belief that Egypt was cheated out of a reasonably easy opportunity to make it to the World Cup and that had it known beforehand that holding the ANC would not necessarily mean qualifying for the World Cup, it would probably not have bid in the first place.
