Al Ahly president Mahmoud El-Khatib has hosted his much-anticipated press conference on Saturday, which had nothing to do with Pitso Mosimane’s future.
The Al Ahly boss had indicated he wanted to address the media to “to reveal new important details about the CAF Champions League final, which was held on May 30 in Casablanca”.
The press conference comes in the middle of uncertainty over Pitso Mosimane’s future after the club publicly announced two meetings with their coach this week – something which Mosimane’s wife and agent Moira Thlagale to travel to Egypt to be prepared for all eventualities.
However, the press conference had nothing to do with the South African coach, but was the club’s official response to CAF hosting the CAF Champions League final in Morocco.
El-Kathib explained in the beginning of his press conference which points he will discuss, before going into detail of his explanation, pointing out that this criticism is not directed at any individual such as CAF president Dr. Patrice Motsepe.
“One: We congratulate Wydad for winning the CAF Champions League and wish them all the best in the FIFA Club World Cup.
“Two: Any loss has its lessons and Al Ahly is a big club, you need to learn from the mistakes of any loss and move forward.
“Three: We only want to focus from the lesson of the CAF Champions League and not discuss other points.
“Al Ahly, the club and it’s leadership, do not have a problem with CAF and its leadership. I personally have a good relationship with Mr Patrice Motsepe and believe he is a great leader of African football.
“We’re not here present as Al Ahly Football Club but because all of us as Africans are sad because the whole world spoke about us in this manner over the hosting of the CAF Champions League final.
“We have such a high amount of quality players and our continent deserves a better standard of football. We were astounded by the timing of the announcement of the CAF Champions League.
“You can see as seen in Europe or other associations, the announcement of the venue major finals happens way in advance. This is completely different to what happened this year in the CAFCL, when the final venue was only announced three weeks before the final.
“Our criticism is not against Morocco, and that we didn’t thing they could host the final. They hosted the Champions League final, the year before they hosted the Confederation Cup final.
“Our criticism is based on the fact that CAF would give the final to a country, where one of the finalists is coming from.
“Why did CAF not announce when Senegal withdrew from hosting the CAFCL final? Leaving only Morocco as the country to host the final. In a statement from 12 May CAF announced that South Africa and Nigeria were not ready to host the final, but then the CAF Confederation Cup final was hosted in Nigeria.
“Why was the CAF Champions League final not hosted in Nigeria, when the CAFCC final was hosted in Nigeria – specifically when Nigeria had never hosted the CAFCL final?
“Why didn’t CAF allow the other countries to host the final, like South Africa, who have previously shown they can host big matches? Does this align with fair-play standards?
“We decided, as Al Ahly board, we cannot withdraw from the game – despite all controversy – because it would result in a ban from CAF.
“I want to reiterate that I respect Mr Motsepe and also CAF but we sent several letters to CAF without receiving a reply until they told us about the allocation of the tickets inside the Stade Mohamed V. We were allocated 20 000 tickets but people from outside of Morocco were not able to buy the tickets, hence we only had 2 000 fans in the stands and the rest of the tickets went to Wydad.
“Africa is a big continent and African football deserves better.”
El-Khatib then presented six regulations which the Egyptian giants would like CAF to look into for the betterment of African football and to avoid controversy in future.
“For the African football, we to present the following vision:
1) the CAFCL final would switch back to the two-legged final. The idea of having a one-match final, did not succeed. Europe differs a lot from Africa, here it takes a long time to travel and also we don’t have a unified visa for all countries, we don’t have a unified currency either.
2) In case that the final of the CAFCL would be a one-off it requires transparency and CAF would need to announce the stadiums that will host the finals before the competitions start.
3) CAF should study the rotation of the host countries and exclude countries that have hosted the final in the last five years to give other countries a chance to host the CAF inter club finals.
4) We must apply VAR technology in all African matches.
5) CAF must adopt their current regulation to be fair and transparent and not leave room for interpretation. This is CAF’s responsibility but you leave room for interpretations by the African club, who do their own interpretations.
6) Study the amount of the money CAF hands out to teams participating in any CAF inter club competitions, because the amount the winners are getting doesn’t cover all the expenses, relating to travel, player bonuses, medical costs, etc.”
Story by David Kappel.
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