Morocco and Senegal will appear before the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in Lausanne on Thursday as the legal dispute over the winner of the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations reaches a decisive stage.
The Royal Moroccan Football Federation, the Senegalese Football Federation and the Confederation of African Football (CAF) are all due to present their arguments before a panel of three arbitrators. The case follows a controversial final in which Senegal initially beat Morocco 1-0 after extra time, before CAF later ruled that Senegal had forfeited the match and awarded Morocco a 3-0 victory.
The hearing will have to address two conflicting outcomes: the result recorded on the pitch and the subsequent disciplinary decision that changed the official winner.
Morocco’s case is based on what it considers a strict application of CAF’s regulations. The Moroccan side argues that any team which leaves the field without the referee’s permission must be declared to have lost by forfeit.
CAF’s appeals committee relied on Articles 82 and 84 of the tournament regulations when it overturned Senegal’s result on 17 March 2026 and registered a 3-0 win for Morocco. Morocco is seeking to uphold that decision and retain the title, while Senegal will use the CAS hearing to challenge CAF’s ruling.
The dispute began during the final when Senegal’s players briefly left the pitch in protest at the decision to award Morocco a penalty. They later returned to complete the match. Edouard Mendy saved Brahim Diaz’s spot-kick, before Senegal scored the winning goal in extra time.
‘The cicada and the ant’
Moroccan sports website Le360 Sport has presented the legal battle through the symbolism of The Cicada and the Ant, the well-known fable by French writer Jean de La Fontaine.
The site described the match as having appeared to be settled on the field when Senegal won 1-0. But it said a second contest began when CAF’s appeals committee ruled that Senegal had forfeited the final and awarded Morocco victory.
Le360 Sport referred to the “Senegalese cicada”, which left the pitch before returning, and contrasted it with a calmer Moroccan “ant” that continued to rely on its interpretation of the regulations. Senegal’s appeal to CAS has created another stage of the dispute, this time fought through legal submissions, documents and arguments over the wording of the rules rather than football, spectators or video assistant referee technology.
La Fontaine’s fable was first published in 1668 in the opening volume of his Fables. It tells of a cicada that spends the summer singing without storing food for winter. When the cold arrives, it asks an ant for grain, but the ant refuses and asks what the cicada did during the summer. “I was singing,” comes the reply, prompting the ant to say: “You were singing? Then dance now.”
La Fontaine drew on an older tradition associated with Aesop, using the two insects to represent contrasting behaviour: the cicada lives for the moment, while the ant works, saves and prepares for the future.
