The Confederation of African Football (CAF) has maintained that last week’s disqualification of Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) Football Club from the 2012 Orange Africa Champions League will stand.
Mujib Kasule, the Federation of Uganda Football Associations (FUFA) Vice President in-charge of the League told URN this morning after returning from the CAF headquarters in Cairo, Egypt that the African football governing body said it was too late to change their stand.
Kasule said they had a good meeting with the CAF Secretary General Hicham El Amrani, on Tuesday. Kasule explained to El Amrani why the Ugandan representatives had failed to travel to Mali to honour a second leg game against Djoliba. URA failed to travel to Bamako, Mali for security reasons after the Mali government had been overthrown.
The FUFA official says they had explained to El Amrani the circumstances which forced URA not to travel to honour the fixture after losing the first leg 2-0.
Kasule said the CAF official, however, made it clear that the disqualification of URA could not be changed, but advised that he would forward all explanations to the Competitions Committee which will meet between May1-3 in Cairo.
Together with the URA club secretary Henry Mayeku, the FUFA official traveled to Cairo to try and convince CAF to change their decision on kicking out URA and also survive further sanctions.
But Kasule explained that they were aware CAF could not reverse their decision, but could do away with further sanctions to the Ugandan club if they are convinced the team did not simply skip the fixture.
According to the CAF rules if a team fails to travel for a game, they are disqualified, suspended for three years, and fined US$1,500.
The visiting team is also made to compensate the hosts for the profits they would have realized from the game.
