CAF price too high for Cape Verde

Caf President Issa Hayatou's rule has its problems

The first casualty of next year's African Champions League is already known with the decision of the new Cape Verde champions, Onze Unidos, not to enter the competition.

The announcement was made this week by the team's coach Odilio Neves, who says they do not have the money to participate in the competition.

The dilemma of the islanders comes as a result of the Confederation of African Football's new rule that demands a US$20,000 bond be posted by all entrants in the three African club competitions before they can play.

The rule came into force this year and is meant to centralise the payments of airfares and indemnities for the match officials for all club competition games.

Previously these costs were the responsibility of the host association and often led to the non-arrival of match officials for cup games because their airfares had not been paid on time.

Huge sum

In order to avoid these embarrassing problems, CAF decided to handle the travel arrangements themselves out of a bond and return the leftover money when a club was knocked out of the competition.

But paying such a large amount of money has been impossible for many clubs and has resulted in a poor turnout for this year's three African club competitions, particularly the CAF Cup which has had its smallest entry since being launched in 1992.

"We just do not have the financial resources to enter such a grand competition," said Neves. "When we won the championship, our directors paid each player a bonus so there is definitely no money for the Champions League."