The Confederation of African Football (CAF) has set Saturday 8 September for the hearing of Kenya’s appeal against Equatorial Guinea’s participation in the 2018 Africa Women Cup of Nations.
Kenya purports that Equatorial Guinea’s Jacky Messomo, who showed up for the country twice in their qualifying wins over the East Africans, was ineligible.
Cameroon-born Messomo was not a pure Equatorial Guinea national as she has never played for any club in her adopted country.
In a letter addressed to Kenyan FA and signed by CAF Secretary-General Amr Fahmy, Africa’s football governing body noted: “We deem that your protest is valid for the alleged ineligibility of Jacky Messomo.”
“The matter will be submitted to the Disciplinary Board during their next sitting on 8 September.”
FIFA rule clearly states players with no blood connection to a country are only allowed to represent it if they have lived and played there for five years but that was not the case with the midfielder.
Messomo started her football career in his native country of Cameroon with FC Minafe Yaoundé in 2008 and later signed for Slovakian side FK Union Nove Zamky in the year 2013.
The only way Messomo was eligible to play for Equatorial Guinea is if she played for clubs there from 2006 to 2010.
Sources close to Football Kenya Federation reveal that Kenya has promised to take the appeal to the Court of Arbitration should CAF dismiss their case.
If the Kenyans carry the day, they “will take” Equatorial Guinea’s place in Novembers’ Nations Cup as according to the rules, they will pick a 3-0 victory that would see them beat the two-time Africa champions on 5-3 aggregate.
The central African nation is not new to controversies as in October last year they were banned by the world football governing body, FIFA, from participating in the 2019 Women’s World Cup scheduled for France for fielding ten ineligible players and using forged documents.
This automatically ruled them out from 2018 Awcon qualifiers since the top three nations at the continental showpiece qualify for the World Cup but were permitted by CAF Emergency Committee to feature in the qualifiers.
2018 Africa Women Cup of Nations is scheduled to be played in Ghana but there are fears that the hosting rights maybe snatched from the West African nation as there are no indications that the country was preparing for the event. This event will double as the African qualifiers for the 2019 Women’s World Cup with the top three nations qualifying for the World Cup.
