Yesterday I wrote a blog piece in which I suggested that African football authorities could occasionally gain from accommodating European clubs' requests to change the timing of the African Cup of Nations. The hosts' climate permitting, the continent's showpiece could be staged at a time that doesn't clash with the European league season, thereby (i) increasing the value of television rights for the competition (notably in Europe) and (ii) sparing African players from being forced to irritate their employers, on whom their livelihood depends, in order to represent their countries. At times, a conflict of interest is inevitable, but sometimes such strife could be avoided and I reckoned Africa would do well to seize the initiative and propose a mutually-beneficial switch.
I even suggested that in addition to making practical gains, such a move could generate some goodwill towards the continent, something which is always handy in international relations. Today, alas, I awoke to find that I'm a naïve fool. Because it now transpires that Fifa, who normally pontificates about prioritising countries over clubs, has suddenly, inexcusably, changed its tune, to the detriment, of course, of Africa.
Mahamadou Diarra and Frédéric Kanouté have been ordered to play for their powerful Spanish employers this weekend, rather than in the crucial Mali-Sierra Leone ACN qualifier. Diarra is outraged, branding the diktat "scandalous". And he's right. Fifa's justification is very weak (seriously, read this news piece, in which the world governing body's defence is that its approval of the African fixtures was "not as compulsory" as prior approvals). If Malian officials' claims (which are denied by Fifa) that Fifa granted to European clubs what it simultaneously refused to give to Algerian clubs, then the decision is even more execrable.
Though the proposal in my blog was designed to cater primarily to African interests, it did rest on the assumption that, once African authorities offered a mutually-beneficial arrangement, the goalposts would not be suddenly shifted by, of all bodies, Fifa.
Sadly, it seems that assumption was misguided romantic bilge.
