Ahmad's CAF Is Biggest Basket Case In Football

With apologies to Lewis Carroll, the never-ending stream of bizarre events within African football might well be termed “Ahmad Through the Looking Glass”.

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But who most resembles the Mad Hatter, the Red Queen, the Cheshire Cat and their fantastically gruesome colleagues is anyone’s guess. Right now, CAF is a basket case.

This is the reason FIFA president Gianni Infantino decided to send in secretary-general Fatma Samoura to effectively take control.

Africa’s confederation – and the game over which it sort of rules – has long been an administrative minefield. Never does an international tournament go by without at least one squad threatening a strike over non-payment of money or the accommodation chasm between foreign and home-based stars.

The Africa Cup of Nations is rarely sure of its host until weeks before the finals, even after a nation has been selected and awarded the contract.

All of this could be managed while CAF was expanding from its original four members in 1956 to 56 now. But the steady inflow of new independent nations, with their freshly enfranchised politicians and structures, owed more to excitement and less to expertise.

CAF presidents such as Ethiopia’s Yidnekatchew Tessema (1972-1987) and Issa Hayatou (1988-2017) managed to keep a lid on it all by virtue of personal pragmatism, favours and the power bestowed by top-table membership of FIFA.

But Hayatou sowed a wind of change in confusing longevity with loyalty and duly reaped the whirlwind as Madagascar’s Ahmad dared what others feared to do and put his head above the political parapet.