CAF General Secretary Resigns Amid AFCON Final Controversy Between Morocco and Senegal

Senegal scored the extra-time winner, celebrated on the field, and paraded the AFCON trophy in Paris before a friendly against Peru. None of it held. CAF reversed the result, handed the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations title to Morocco, and on Sunday its General Secretary was gone too.

Veron Mosengo-Omba announced his resignation from Cairo on March 29, stepping down effective immediately after more than 30 years in international football administration. He cited a desire to pursue personal projects, but his departure came days after CAF's contested ruling that Senegal had forfeited January's AFCON final, a decision now under challenge at the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

"After over 30 years of an international professional career dedicated to promoting an ideal form of football that brings people together, educates, and creates opportunities for hope, I have decided to step down from my position as Secretary General of CAF to devote myself to more personal projects," Mosengo-Omba wrote in his signed press release. He also addressed the controversies that had shadowed his tenure: "Now that I have been able to dispel the suspicions that some people have gone to great lengths to cast on me, I can retire with peace of mind and without constraint, leaving the CAF more prosperous than ever."

The sequence of events that brought CAF to this moment began in the final itself. With the score level at 0-0, Morocco were awarded a stoppage-time penalty. Senegal's players walked off the pitch in protest. After a delay of roughly 17 minutes, they returned; Morocco missed the spot-kick, and Senegal scored in extra time. The Moroccan Football Federation then appealed to CAF, which ruled that Senegal had forfeited the match by leaving the field and awarded Morocco a 3-0 victory. Senegal has since filed an appeal with CAS challenging that ruling, and CAF is awaiting the court's decision.

The resignation arrived against a broader institutional breakdown. CAF had also postponed the women's tournament at the last minute, and Mosengo-Omba's tenure had drawn allegations of favouritism and questions about key appointments within the organization, deepening what the governing body's critics described as a crisis of confidence.

Samson Adamu, CAF's Nigerian competitions director, took over as acting general secretary immediately. CAF President Dr. Patrice Motsepe said "We are enormously grateful to Veron for his contributions and the work he did for the development and growth of African football," adding: "I'm confident that Samson will do a good job. Samson has started immediately and he will be leading us going forward." The vice-presidents will lead the search for a permanent replacement and report their recommendation to Motsepe, who said he will travel to Senegal in the coming weeks to address the dispute directly.

CAF simultaneously announced plans to overhaul its statutes and regulations, pledging in a statement to strengthen "trust and confidence in the CAF referees, VAR operators and the CAF Disciplinary Board and Appeal Board," with changes designed to ensure "that the incidences that took place at the final match of the TotalEnergies CAF Africa Cup of Nations 2025 do not happen again."

Mosengo-Omba pointed to increased commercial revenue and structural reforms as hallmarks of his time in the role. Whether that legacy survives the AFCON ruling and the CAS judgment still to come is a question the institution will be answering long after his departure.