Thread by @osasuo

Breaking: I have spent the last half-hour with a @CAF_Online official, explaining, off the record, their #WAFCON2022 position on #TeamZambia ‘s @BarbraBanda11. It was a deeply robust discussion and I will disclose what he said. (A thread…)

“Osasu, everyone is criticising us for Banda. But I have one question - did @FAZFootball submit her name as a member of #TeamZambia for the #WAFCON? They never did, at any time. So, how can we talk about a player that was never put forward for registration or registered?”

“@FAZFootball never did, at any time, tell us that @BarbraBanda11 had any issue that made her ineligible for the #WAFCON in #Morocco. That is the truth of the matter. We are not obligated to ask why a country did not register a player for it. That’s an internal matter.”

I asked the @CAF_Online official if @FAZFootball had intimated them of any issue making @BarbraBanda11 ineligible to play at the #WAFCON2022 - “At no time did Zambia tell us about any concern, regarding Banda. We cannot address what was never brought to us.”

“I can categorically say that CAF did not exclude @BarbraBanda11 from the #WAFCON, and certainly not for medical reasons,” he went on. As you would agree, CAF’s position provides more questions than answers…

How does this sit with the statement of @FAZFootball president Andrew Kamanga, who emphatically told @BBCAfrica’s @cjkaroney that Banda was excluded from the #WAFCON2022 for failing CAF’s gender tests?

Kamanga: “All the players had to undergo gender verification, a CAF requirement and unfortunately, she did not meet the criteria set by CAF.”👇🏾
bbc.com/sport/africa/6…

I asked the @CAF_Online official about the statement they were to release about Banda on Tuesday. “We opted not to release this statement, because we felt that we need to protect the player, who is being put in the centre of a storm that could jeopardise her career,” he said.

But how is the player protected, now it is public that @BarbraBanda11 failed to meet the @CAF_Online gender/DSD guidelines? Why did she fail the test? Why was she able to play at the @Tokyo2020 @Olympics only a year before? We are nowhere near getting to the bottom of this!

This is the official @FAZFootball statement on @BarbraBanda11, released on Wednesday.