A soccer club from Morocco was awarded a win under bizarre circumstances this week after their kits were confiscated by customs officials in Algeria.
Renaissance Sportive Berkane, based in the northwest Moroccan city of Berkane, was scheduled to visit Algerian side USM Alger in the first leg of their CAF Confederation Cup semifinal tie on Sunday, April 21. But the Moroccan side refused to take the field after Algerian customs officials held the team up for hours at the airport in Algiers and ultimately confiscated their kits.
However, on Wednesday, the Confederation of African Football sided with RS Berkane, awarding them a 3-0 default victory. The CAF also indicated that further sanctions would be handed down against USM Alger — the defending Confederation Cup champions — because of the incident.
At issue is a map of Morocco on the chest of RS Berkane’s kits. The map includes the Western Sahara territory, which has been at the center of a dispute between Morocco and the Algeria-backed Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic since Spain relinquished control of the region in 1975.
RS Berkane had worn the kits with the map throughout the current Confederation Cup campaign, but “Algerian commentators termed it provocative and said it flew in the face of rules banning displays of a political nature on football kit,” Al Jazeera reports.
This is not the first time political tensions between the two nations have spilled over onto the soccer pitch. In January 2023, a team of Moroccan under-23 players withdrew from the CAF African Nations Championship being held in Algeria after the Algerian government refused to let the team fly directly there on Morocco’s national airline, Royal Air Maroc. Algeria closed its border with Morocco and banned Moroccan aircraft from entering its airspace in August 2021 because of the dispute.
The CAF has said it expects the second leg of the Confederation Cup semifinal tie to go ahead at the Berkane Municipal Stadium on Sunday, April 28.
UPDATE (Monday, April 29, 2024): The second leg of the CAF Confederation Cup semifinal tie did not go ahead on Sunday, April 28. The BBC reports that USM Alger traveled to Morocco for the game but refused to take the pitch at the scheduled kickoff time in protest of the map on RS Berkane’s kits.
The CAF has yet to comment on Sunday’s incident, but it’s expected RS Berkane will advance to the Confederation Cup final against Egyptian club Zamalek. The Algerian Football Federation will likely launch an appeal at the Court of Arbitration for Sport arguing that RS Berkane’s kits breached FIFA equipment regulations that prohibit “political statements or images” on kits.