Seyi

Golf in School Program @ Ikeja Primary Schools

@FinPlanKaluAja1 No Sir, Ministee of Defence is a political appointee

The Minister of Defence has no business at any partisan political gathering None whatsoever

@FinPlanKaluAja1 Is it NFF only? What was the role of the NSC?

Anyone surprised the NFF is incompetent is not a real Nigerian

@OgaNlaMedia How does one get the opportunity to be voted for at the congress? Can a random lawyer be elected to CAF appeals panel? Amaju is just playing with people’s intelligence

Amaju Pinnick on Morocco vs Senegal scandal. Do you agree or disagree???

@israel_ajoje It appears the referee was wrong in allowing Senegal to continue the match after 15 minutes. If he had blown the final whistle whilst they were still in the dressing room, would the referee had been right?

CAF's Appeal Board ruled yesterday that in application of Article 84 of the AFCON Regulations, the Senegal National Team is declared to have forfeited the 2025 AFCON final, with the result recorded as 3-0 in favour of Morocco. But there are at least four serious legal arguments that suggest this ruling is not as clean as CAF wants you to believe. I am an International Sports Lawyer. Let me walk you through all of them. Are you still with me? Good. But first, let us be fair to Morocco because their case deserves to be understood properly before we interrogate it. Articles 82 and 84 of the AFCON Regulations state clearly that if a team refuses to play or leaves the ground before the regular end of the match without the authorisation of the referee, it shall be considered the loser and eliminated from the competition, with the result recorded as 3-0 against them. On January 18, coach Pape Thiaw ordered his players off the pitch after two consecutive decisions went against Senegal in the space of ninety seconds. First, a Senegal goal was disallowed for a foul by Abdoulaye Seck on Achraf Hakimi, despite replays showing minimal contact. Then, immediately after, a VAR review awarded Morocco a penalty. The players left. Only Sadio Mane stayed. The match was suspended for around fifteen minutes. The regulation does not say "unless you come back." It says without the referee's authorisation. Senegal left without permission. Morocco read the rule, applied it, and appealed on that basis. On a textual reading, that case is solid. And here is the extra layer Morocco will lean on heavily. What precedent does it set if a team can walk off a pitch for fifteen minutes in protest over a refereeing decision in an AFCON final, return, and still keep the trophy? Every team in every future tournament now knows that if they disagree with a decision, they can walk off, regroup, come back, and face zero sporting consequence for it. The regulation exists precisely to prevent that kind of leverage over match officials and the integrity of competition. You cannot run a tournament if teams can temporarily abandon matches without consequence. That is the strongest version of their case. Now let us talk about why it is not the full story. The first argument Senegal can make is “qui approbat non reprobat”. It is a Latin principle that means you cannot approbate and reprobate at the same time. You cannot accept the benefit of a situation and then challenge the basis of it. After Senegal returned to the pitch, Morocco participated fully in the resumption. They contested the penalty. They played thirty minutes of extra time. They accepted the sporting outcome of that period without walking off themselves. By continuing to play after Senegal returned, Morocco accepted the resumption as legitimate. They cannot now argue the match should be treated as abandoned when they were active participants in its conclusion. That tension will not be lost on a CAS panel. The second argument is proportionality, and this is arguably the strongest one Senegal has. This ruling is without precedent in the history of AFCON and indeed the highest level of international football. The regulation was designed for teams that abandon matches entirely. Teams that refuse to take the field. Teams that do not return. A fifteen minute protest followed by a full return, a completed penalty, thirty minutes of extra time, and a winner determined through sporting competition is not abandonment in any meaningful sense of the word. Applying a forfeit provision designed for total withdrawal to a completed match, where both teams participated in the full ninety minutes plus extra time, is a disproportionate application of a rule to circumstances it was never designed to cover. CAS has consistently held that sanctions must be proportionate to the actual harm caused. The match was completed. That distinction matters enormously in proportionality analysis. The third is Law 5.2 of the IFAB Laws of the Game, which states that the referee's decisions regarding facts connected with play are final. Referee Jean-Jacques Ndala chose to wait for Senegal's return. He chose to resume the match. He administered the penalty, oversaw extra time, and brought the fixture to its conclusion. In doing so, he made a decision connected with the conduct of play. The question Senegal's lawyers should be asking is whether the referee's decision to resume constitutes a final decision that CAF's administrative bodies cannot retrospectively override. This however is not a settled question in football law. FIFA has never fully resolved the boundary between referee authority under the Laws of the Game and governing body authority under competition regulations. That unresolved tension is exactly the kind of legal crack a well-argued CAS appeal exploits. The fourth argument goes beyond Senegal entirely. The CAF Appeal Board set aside the earlier CAF Disciplinary Board decision, which had opted for light sanctions and allowed the result to stand. Two separate bodies in one governing organisation had the same set of facts and polar opposite rulings. That internal contradiction is not just a procedural embarrassment. It is evidence that the application of Articles 82 and 84 to these specific facts was genuinely contested even within CAF itself. CAF's own rulings confirmed that Morocco's federation was sanctioned for ball boy misconduct involving interference with the towel of Senegal goalkeeper Edouard Mendy, and for laser use by the home crowd, conduct that directly contributed to the environment that caused Senegal to walk off. A competent legal team will and should use all of that. Finally,  here is the consequence that stretches far beyond this one final. Every federation under CAF's jurisdiction, every club in the CAF Champions League, every national team in every AFCON qualifier, now has to reckon with a new reality. A result confirmed on a pitch, validated by a referee, and celebrated by a nation is no longer necessarily final. If a governing body can strip a champion two months after the trophy was lifted, on the basis of conduct that did not prevent the match from reaching its conclusion, then every result in African football is now theoretically contestable in a boardroom long after the final whistle. The losing side in any match where a protest or walkout occurred, however brief, however resolved, now has a legal template to point at. It means one can file a complaint, escalate to the Appeal Board and cite Articles 82 and 84. The CAF Appeal Board has just demonstrated that the outcome is not guaranteed to be what happened on the pitch. That is not a stable foundation for any football competition to operate on. It does not just affect Senegal and Morocco. It affects every federation that competes under CAF's umbrella, because all of them now know that the boardroom is open for business long after the referee has blown the final whistle. FIFA will be watching this CAS appeal very closely. Because if CAS upholds it, the template may not stay in Africa. The Senegalese Football Federation Secretary General Abdoulaye Seydou Sow has already stated they will appeal to CAS, calling the ruling a travesty with no legal foundation. He is not wrong to go there. The internal contradiction between CAF's two bodies alone gives them a genuine platform. CAS operates independently of CAF and has overturned governing body decisions before when the proportionality and procedural arguments are strong enough. Senegal lifted a trophy, celebrated a nation and went home as champions. Two months later, a boardroom took it away. Whether the rule was correctly applied or not, one question African football cannot avoid is this: if two separate bodies within the same organisation cannot agree on what the rule means, on what basis should a nation lose a title they won on the pitch? That is the question CAS will have to answer. And how they answer it will shape the boundaries of what football administrators can do to results that were already decided by sport. My name is Ajoje. I am a FIFA Licensed Agent and International Sports Lawyer. I write on the Law and Business of Football, a lot. Repost and Follow if you want to read more posts like this.

@afrisagacity Does this affect his cognitive abilities?

King Charles (77 yrs old) held the hand of Tinubu (73 yrs) to assist him in walking down the stairs. Is Tinubu too frail to walk by himself?✍️

@MUFCScoop Which experience of winning trophies and competing in Europe does Arteta have? The key is INEOS supporting the Manager fully as we’ve had Managers with the so called experience and they failed

Roy Keane: “Most players love a caretaker manager. He [Carrick] hasn't had any distractions. When you get appointed manager, you have a lot of different responsibilities.  I think Man Utd need someone with more experienced of winning trophies, competing in Europe, and he hasn't got that. All this chat that everyone loves him - I don't know if everyone was loving him last week when they couldn't beat a Newcastle team with 10 men. The timing was good for Man Utd. Remember this is the same team who finished 15th. People get giddy that United are third in the league - I don't. I'm not one of them. I get excited when teams are winning trophies.” #MUFC

@idofoi Is @BabajideOtitoju referring to Wike?

PDP Internal Crisis: "...Some of them are already negotiating with APC..." - Babajide Otitoju

@utdHarryy What has he won?

Rather keep Carrick permanently I don’t mind De Zerbi when it comes to the tactical side, we will dominate possession a lot of gams. Only worry for me is apparently he is a awful man manager and the comment he made about not coaching to win trophies but to have fun, that’s a big red flag for me

@RegistaCall Carrick is an interim, he is not going to get 4/5 new players as he might not be in the saddle next season, so no need to judge him. I don’t know why this is hard to understand

Carrick needs 4/5 new players before we can fully judge him

@Biyo_lar Carrick is just an interim manager to the end of the season. He is not the substantive manager. If he does well, he would merely be auditioning for the substantive position. So there’s no need for him to be judged or compared to Amorim (which most are doing)

Before I can judge Carrick, he needs 14 months and 22 new players.

@MartienBall I don’t think we need three years. What we need is massive investment which the Glazers and INEOS are incapable of providing.

People who keep talking about bringing in a world-class manager are the same people who will have no patience with him and call him “outdated” the moment these players decide to stroll around the pitch against 10 men. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: no matter which manager you bring in, he’ll need at least 3 years to properly change this football club.

@_MrN6_ @AnnemarieDray We will still play crap if there’s no investment in the squad

@AnnemarieDray Amorim was sacked a long tym ago and there is no point in talking about him. The real discussion should be abt some section of the fanbase being blindly obsessed with Carrick. We have played crap since Arsenal and we need to get Enrique or at least a Naglesmann in the summer.

Whether you think Michael Carrick should be permanent manager of Manchester United is a honest debate but what I find truly ludicrous and borderline laughable is the people holding him to a higher standard than they ever held Amorim.

@KazHoshay @AnnemarieDray No top coach is going to succeed without massive investment in the playing squad. We’ve had so called top coaches in the past and what was the outcome?

@AnnemarieDray 99% of United fans were looking for a top coach after Amorim firing....but people are being attacked for still believing in finding a top coach and not changing their minds because Carrick is having a great run. Didn't we learn anything from Ollie's time? We must seek the best!

@TheRonaldoLad7 @telnetedison4ph Carrick is an interim coach please

@NoushardMUFC I agree with you. I even thought either Heaven or Kukonki would have been better. But hope he learns

This is where my criticism of Carrick becomes much harsher. You know very well that Tyrell Malacia has barely played twenty competitive minutes in almost two years. No rhythm. No match sharpness. No physical base. Newcastle are pressing us into the ground. Rapid transitions. Superior intensity. They are outrunning us everywhere. And let’s be clear, they are doing this with ten men after a red card. In that context, you look at your bench and see Ayden Heaven. A defender who can run, recover, duel, and actually match the physical demands of the game. And you choose Malacia instead. A player who cannot sprint, cannot press, cannot tackle, and cannot impose himself defensively. That substitution is indefensible. Then there is Ugarte. Call it bad luck, call it limitations, call it whatever you want. The pattern is undeniable. Every time he plays, control disappears and results collapse. Yet he keeps getting minutes in games that demand clarity and composure. I cannot rationalize these decisions. Not tactically. Not physically. Not logically. This is not bad luck. This is poor management. We need a serious manager at the end of the season, before we even think about the World Cup cycle. Enough of the nostalgia. Enough of the sentimentality. Enough of hoping it somehow works itself out. Carrick may be part of the club’s history. But history does not win trophies. This team needs leadership, structure, and authority. What we are getting instead is guesswork.

@Domiswae Do you think we are going to win all our matches under Carrick?

Amorim: Drew to relegation west ham Out of the efl cup Lost to 10 men Was 3 points from top 4 Carrick/DNA: Drew to west han Out of f.a cup Lost to 10 men In top 3 Can’t talk see that the coach doesn’t really matter??

@Domiswae @Quaser_unt Why not

@Quaser_unt Let’s hire him as our next manager then😊😊😊

@kalikkay0_9 @fhhdkciobdhj @1lyle_ Amorim is gone with the winds. When you are tired of being disappointed, you follow him to his new club. That’s the wise thing to do, as a wise one

@Seyibee @fhhdkciobdhj @1lyle_ One of the fuuus

Amorim actually made Manchester United fans tactically literate. He explained the ideas, the structure, the patterns clearly. So going back to something that looks completely uncoached is jarring.

@fhhdkciobdhj @1lyle_ What was he building. Football is a result oriented business. With Amorim we were closer to the relegation zone than to champions league football

@1lyle_ Exactly, real, thank you for this, people are just dumb, yes he wasn’t perfect but he was building something and the workings were there, it’s only fools who won’t admit the obvious

@UTDKara Amorim is gone forever. He even went with a hefty compensation package

Amorim’s intense style of play possession football, man to man marking, and his system is starting to fade away from these players. For the past four games, we’ve just been playing vibes football, with individual brilliance from Sesko and Bruno Fernandes saving us. Let’s admit it the players are now playing the same way we saw under Erik. And it’s going to hurt us later. That’s why I told you all Amorim was building a monster in them. But after a few weeks, all the hard work is gone just like that. After this season, we should go for Luis Enrique. We also need to sign five new players and move on from Malacia, Dalot, Shaw, Ugarte, Zirkzee, Casemiro, and a few academy players.