Official: USM Alger Lose Final Battle in the Berkane Shirt Saga
The long-running USM Alger-RS Berkane saga has finally reached its legal conclusion, with the Court of Arbitration for Sport dismissing USM Alger and the Algerian Football Federation’s appeal against the forfeiture of their 2024 CAF Confederation Cup semi-final. CAS confirmed that the 3-0 defeat awarded to Berkane for the abandoned second leg will stand.
The controversy began in Algiers, where Berkane’s shirts were seized because they displayed a map of Morocco incorporating the disputed Western Sahara. Berkane refused to play in alternative shirts, prompting CAF to award the Moroccan club a 3-0 victory. The return leg in Berkane collapsed for the opposite reason: USM Alger refused to play while Berkane wore the disputed jerseys.
The extraordinary part of the story is that USM Alger was not entirely wrong about the shirts. In February 2025, CAS ruled that Berkane’s map constituted a political message and breached football regulations prohibiting political images on playing equipment.
That ruling, though, did not erase what happened in April 2024. CAS has now determined that CAF’s original approval of Berkane’s shirts remained legally effective on the night USM Alger refused to play. The later decision declaring the shirts unlawful could not be applied retrospectively to overturn the result of the abandoned match.
For USM Alger, that distinction is a painful one. They eventually won the argument over the legality of the shirt, yet lost the match because they chose not to play while the earlier CAF decision remained in force. In the eyes of CAS, the refusal to take the field constituted a breach of the competition regulations.
The episode remains very strange: two semi-final legs were scheduled, neither was played, and Berkane reached the final without kicking a ball against the defending champions. The Moroccan side eventually went on to beat Zamalek in the first leg of the final before lifting the Confederation Cup.
CAS has now closed the book. Berkane’s shirt was ultimately judged to have crossed the line, but USM Alger’s forfeiture remains intact.
