Letters to “Teranga” — and to Those Who Hide Behind It

Noureddine Boutahar 

To the Senegal Head Coach:

Coach, do you rest easy after breaking faith with the oldest law of hospitality—bread and salt —and feeding it to disorder? What unfolded was not competitive intensity; it was a failure of command. Morocco did not train you so you could return as a conqueror, nor did it help build your career so you could trample the rules of the very house that once gave you shelter. You replaced the game’s intelligence with temper, turned the stands into a fog of noise, and used the touchline as a megaphone for agitation. The signal to your players was unmistakable: lose your composure and you might yet prevail. In that moment, you stopped leading and started lighting fires.

To the Senegalese Football Federation:

To the Federation, this is a rebuke equal to the disappointment you have caused. Rather than acting as a brake on excess and a guardian of standards, you chose to shield misconduct—sometimes through silence, other times through thin excuses that fooled no one. Where was the moral authority that sporting diplomacy demands? Where was the respect owed to millions watching and to thousands filling Moroccan stadiums? You squandered a long-standing legacy of fraternity—one forged well before the eras of Senghor and Abdou Diouf—and traded wisdom for obstinacy, restraint for bluster. By allowing recklessness to stain the Lions of Teranga jersey, once a symbol of continental dignity, you reduced it to evidence of institutional drift unworthy of Senegal’s standing. Worse still, this blow came not from an open rival, but from a partner we assumed had our back—only to discover, too late, a knife in it.

To the CAF Disciplinary Committee:

Your ruling was not balance; it was evasion. Placing victim and aggressor on the same footing is not justice—it is its distortion. Disorder was not punished; it was normalized. You issued the offender a clean bill of health and broadcast a corrosive lesson: raise your voice, bend the rules, and leniency will follow. In doing so, CAF drifted from the role of referee into that of fig leaf, blurring the line between order and chaos and confirming, once again, that African football struggles to clean its own house. As the old saying goes, a crooked yardstick never measures straight.

To Those Who Lie in Wait for Morocco’s Fall:

Your embrace of turmoil is not conviction; it is instinct. It is crab mentality at its rawest—if we cannot rise, no one should. Your effort to drag Morocco down is really an attempt to smash the mirror that exposes your own shortcomings. In the process, you hand the world fresh proof for its worst clichés about the continent and push African football another step closer to the edge. You are, quite simply, cutting off your nose to spite your face.

In closing, Morocco must remember that it is moving through a jungle, not strolling in a landscaped garden. Machiavelli’s advice remains as relevant as ever: be a fox to detect the traps, and a lion to keep the wolves at bay.