The Roon Ba

[jonny]

Samedi, dans la vaste salle du Palais des Congrès de Cotonou, au Bénin, l'ancien footballeur professionnel du RC Lens a tiré dans la poule B, le Sénégal, le Mali finaliste 2008, la Côte d'Ivoire vainqueur 2008 et le Burkina ; tandis qu'on retrouve dans la poule A, le Bénin, pays organisateur, le Togo, le Niger et la Guinée Bissau.

Dans la poule B, le Sénégal retrouve donc la Côte d'Ivoire qui lui avait barré le chemin de la finale un après-midi du 7 novembre 2008 au stade Modibo Keïta de Bamako (1 - 0) après deux matches couronnés de succès face au Togo et au Niger tous deux battus sur le même score (1 - 0). Ce tournoi de l'Intégration Africaine qui réunit les pays ayant en partage le franc CFA, se dispute uniquement entre joueurs locaux. Ouagadougou au Burkina Faso avait abrité la première édition en 2007, Bamako la capitale du Mali lui ayant succédé en 2008, cette année ce sera Cotonou au Bénin d'accueillir les jeunes footballeurs issus de la même zone monétaire.

http://fr.allafrica.com/stories/200909141225.html

[jonny]

Official website

DATES ( Année 2009 ) HEURES MATCHES
Dimanche 22 Novembre 15h 00 Cérémonie d’ouverture
16h 00 Bénin # Togo
18h 00 Niger # Guinée Bissau
Lundi 23 Novembre 14h 30 Sénégal # Burkina faso
16h 30
Côte d'Ivoire# Mali

Mardi 24 Novembre 14h 30
Niger# Togo

16h 30
Guinée Bissau # Bénin
Mercredi 25 Novembre 14h 30
Sénégal # Mali
16h 30
Burkina faso# Côte d'Ivoire

Jeudi 26 Novembre 14h 30
Togo # Guinée Bissau
16h 30
Bénin # Niger
Vendredi 27 Novembre 14h 30
Mali # Burkina faso

16h 30
Côte d'Ivoire # Sénégal
La Finale 16h 00
Finale Suivi de la Cérémonie de Clôture


http://www.tournoiuemoa.com/

Should any of the matches be counted as "A" matches ?

ROON BA got one match : Guinea Bissau - Niger

[nfm24]

Personally, if there are rules stating that only home-based players can play, then they cannot be A matches.

If the teams are free to decide how strong a team to field, then some can be A.

[Fast Midfielder]

[jonny]

"Cette compétition est exclusivement réservée aux joueurs évoluant sur le continent africain."

"UEMOA is a tournament for players on African continent "

[nfm24]

So it is not just home-based players, but only players based in Africa. However my feelings are the same - whenever there are restrictions on who can play, the team should not be considered as A.

After all, what can an "A" team mean, if not "the best team available, without restrictions"?

So although for Guinea-Bissau or Niger, or some weaker countries without many players based in Europe, the CHAN team or UEMOA team can be almost the same as their A national team, this doesn't necessarily mean they should be considered as A matches.

On the other hand, such restrictions are not exactly recent, with African football. Remember that in the early editions of the African Nations Cup, only amateur players were allowed. Then later up to two professionals were allowed per team, and finally in 1984 (I think) the restrictions were removed.
Similarly the African Games rules restricted to amateurs.

So for some countries like Algeria which had many foreign based players even then, the only occasions on which they could field their best team was in World Cup qualifiers, or for glamourous friendlies.


A corresponding example is the Olympics, when the rules required only amateurs. Some countries had no professionalism (maybe only a couple of pro players in foreign leagues), so their Olympic teams were the same or almost the same as A teams. Yet FIFA decided to delete many decades worth of the Olympic matches anyway. So therefore it should not consider UEMOA matches or similar as official.

A more complicated matter is friendlies involving CHAN or UEMOA teams - in friendlies there are no official restrictions, only self-imposed ones...

It would, of course, be ideal to know the official view of the African national associations, if they consider the CHAN/UEMOA matches to be official or not. I guess some of the more powerful teams like Ivory Coast would not.

Consistency = impossible

A simple solution is just to include all the CHAN/UEMOA etc matches, but with a note or marker ** saying that there were player restrictions.

[mcruic]

22/11 results
Benin 0-1 Togo
Niger 3-0 Guinea-Bissau

[siepacz]

[mcruic]

I don't think any should be A matches. We could then go back in to the CHAN tournament qualifying matches and consider some of them A matches on the same basis (probably some of the CECAFA teams have the same teams for CHAN qualifiers that they do for CECAFA Cup matches). The difference is - the rules of the CECAFA Cup allow teams to play whoever they want (no restrictions on foreign players) while CHAN and UEMOA are for local-based players only - i.e. - even if they only have one player playing abroad, it is still a restriction. As it is a restrictive team, I don't think we can include the matches, despite the probability that the teams are almost identical to the national teams (Guinea-Bissau and Niger newspapers talk about "the national team" for this tournament).

[mcruic]

23/11
Senegal 3-0 Burkina Faso
Côte d'Ivoire 1-1 Mali

[mcruic]