The match between Sierra Leone and Benin, scheduled for Tuesday March 30 in Freetown, will take place in June. The CAF decided so, after the Beninese denounced an attempt to cheat Sierra Leoneans against the background of positive Covid tests of (very) doubtful veracity.

The private plane responsible for transporting the Beninese delegation to Cotonou, then to Paris for players in France, left Freetown international airport nearly twenty-four hours late on Wednesday afternoon. And in the aircraft, the passengers, crushed with fatigue and mentally worn out by a stay they will remember for a long time, will perhaps find time to talk about ”   the case of the Covid tests in Sierra Leone . “Before letting the Beninese find the peace of their Boeing, the local authorities, going to the end of their approach, have multiplied the baseness: a police escort who is long overdue, the players’ bus and other vehicles reserved for others members of the delegation immobilized for more than two hours after the check out at the hotel, and five players supposedly positive for Covid-19 (Saturnin Allagbé, Jodel Dossou, Steve Mounié, Yohan Roche and Khaled Adenon) forced to take their seats in a vehicle specially reserved for them.

Dussuyer: “The string is a little too big”

What was to be a simple football match, certainly decisive for the qualification for the CAN in Cameroon, turned into vaudeville. Sierra Leone, absent from the final phase since 1996, in South Africa, haad the obligation to win against the Squirrels to qualify, while the latter, beaten three days earlier in Porto-Novo by Nigeria (0-1) could settle for a draw . But the facts observed over the past twenty-four hours give credence to a now widespread hypothesis: the Sierra Leoneans seem to have exceeded certain limits, as the Beninese have reported, with details in support. They had carried out tests in Cotonou on Saturday evening, before leaving for Freetown, scheduled for the next day. ”  Tests with the delegation, ie 77 people and all negative. We carried out further tests in Freetown on Monday morning, and when we are given the results on Tuesday when we have just arrived at the stadium, we are told that five players are positive and must be isolated. Five players, all holders, and not a single official, or member of the staff. The string is a little too big, it looks like an obvious attempt at cheating   , ”summarizes Michel Dussuyer, the French coach of Benin.

CAF opens an investigation

An assertion supported by the method used by the Sierra Leoneans, which would be touching amateurism if there was no question of a decisive meeting for a qualification for the final phase of CAN. Instead of producing official documents attesting to the positivity of the players named above, the competent medical authorities brandished under the noses of the Beninese a simple blank sheet on which were simply registered the surnames of the five Squirrels. “   The problem is that two of them, Roche and Mounié, contracted the virus recently, and they have developed antibodies. In other words, they cannot be infected again so quickly  ”, Continues Dussuyer. And the match, under these conditions, could obviously not take place, because of the extreme tension reigning at the stadium of Freetown, where the Beninese players had just spent more than four hours in their bus.

The African Football Confederation (CAF) has opened an investigation, after postponing the match to next June, “on neutral ground”, as many Beninese wish. Mathurin de Chacus, president of the Benin Football Federation (FBF), also a member of the FIFA Council, directly alerted Gianni Infantino. And if the investigation carried out by CAF were to conclude that the Sierra Leoneans had deliberate and premeditated intention to defraud, it is hard to imagine how the local federation could escape sanctions, going as far as disqualification from the national team …