The Confederation of African Football has scrapped the penalty shoot-out that decided the WAFU Zone B final between Nigeria’s Edo Queens FC and Ghana’s Ampem Darkoa Ladies FC, ordering the two sides to return to the pitch and complete the extra time that officials skipped.
CAF’s Organising Committee for Women’s Football handed down the ruling on Saturday, upholding a protest the Ghana Football Association filed on behalf of Ampem Darkoa within 48 hours of the controversial match.
The final, played on September 5 at the 4th of August Stadium in Ouagadougou, ended 2-2 after regulation time. Instead of playing the required two 15-minute periods of extra time, referees sent both teams straight to penalties, where Edo Queens prevailed 4-1 to claim the WAFU Zone B ticket to the CAF Women’s Champions League.
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Ghana cried foul, arguing the shortcut violated Articles 13.1 and 72.4 of the CAF Women’s Champions League Regulations, which explicitly mandate extra time before any shoot-out in a drawn final. CAF’s investigation backed that claim.
According to the committee, match officials had been briefed before kickoff that extra time would follow a level score, and organisers repeated that instruction during the pre-match coordination meeting. Someone, however, told the referee mid-match to head straight to penalties if the scores stayed level and the referee complied in good faith, skipping the mandatory 30 minutes entirely.
CAF’s committee stopped short of ordering a full replay, reasoning that the 90 minutes of regulation football produced a valid result that neither club disputed.
Wiping out the entire match, the ruling states, would unfairly erase a period nobody has challenged. Instead, the committee annulled only the penalty shoot-out and ordered the match to resume from 2-2, picking up exactly where the error occurred: the start of extra time.
The restart comes with strict conditions attached. Both clubs must field the same players who were on the pitch when regulation time ended, retain the same available substitutes, and carry over each side’s existing disciplinary record and remaining substitution allowance.
CAF also directed that the continuation happen at the same venue, pending WAFU Zone B’s confirmation, and with the same match officials who took charge of the original fixture.
Should the score remain tied after the replayed extra time, the teams will contest a fresh penalty shoot-out to settle the tie once and for all. WAFU Zone B now carries the responsibility of fixing a date, kick-off time and venue for the continuation, coordinating with CAF and both national federations, and covering all costs tied to staging the resumed match.
Whichever club survives the continuation will claim the WAFU Zone B slot in the 2026 CAF Women’s Champions League final tournament a place that, for now, remains unclaimed.
