The Confederation of African Football (CAF) has cancelled the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations qualifier between Ghana’s Black Stars and the Leone Stars of Sierra Leone scheduled for October 11 and 14 in Accra and Freetown respectively.
The cancellation of the qualifiers, announced on CAF’s website on Tuesday evening, was occasioned by the failure of the Sierra Leone FA (SLFA) to meet conditions stipulated in a letter sent by CAF on a decision by football’s world governing body, FIFA, to suspend the federation.
On Friday, FIFA banned the Sierra Leone from all football activities following a decision to force the president of the SLFA, Isha Johansen, to step aside while the country’s Anti-Corruption Commission seized control of the FA’s office.
FIFA rejected any move to forcefully take over the SLFA by the government and subsequently ordered that until the administration of the SLFA was returned to the suspended president, it would not lift the sanction.
The Sierra Leonean government wrote to FIFA requesting it to lift the sanctions on the SLFA to enable them honour their AFCON qualifier against Ghana on Thursday.
However in response, FIFA’s Director for Africa-Caribbean, Veron Mosengo-Omba, stated in a letter reminding the SLFA of the laborious processes which must be followed if the sanction must be lifted and challenged them to ensure they complied fully with the FIFA directive by a 5pm [18:00 (CET)] deadline on Tuesday if they wanted to play in the qualifier.
Ghana’s Black Stars are already in Kumasi preparing for the Thursday’s match.
