Burkina Faso's Stallions stranded in Casablanca before facing Argentina on October 4
The Burkina Faso national team was scheduled to travel to Buenos Aires to face Argentina in a friendly match on Sunday, October 4, 2026, at 12:00 AM GMT. Two days before the deadline, the Stallions were still stranded in Casablanca, Morocco, ten hours of flight time away from the Argentine capital.
The Burkinabe Football Federation (FBF) explained in a statement relayed by Africa Top Sports that a flight scheduled for September 30, 2026, was cancelled without notice by the charter company, forcing officials to rebuild the entire travel plan. The federation acknowledges that these delays have fueled anxiety within the group. According to the same statement, Minister of Sports Annick Pikbougoum Zingué Ouattara, FBF President Oumarou Sawadogo, and the Burkinabe Ambassador to Morocco, Mamadou Coulibaly, have been working to resolve the situation.
A match maintained, but under conditions
Neither the FBF nor the Argentine Football Association has cancelled the match, reports Burkina24. The Burkinabe media outlet, citing journalist Alexandre le Grand Rouamba, indicates that the issue of the special flight has finally been resolved, but that "the problem lies within the Stallions group." The Ivorian site Linfodrome mentions two aborted departure attempts.
The price of the event
Still according to Burkina24, the match is part of Lionel Messi's jubilee—the Argentine striker is not announced to play—and the private company in charge of logistics favored commercial flights rather than a chartered flight, creating the scheduling conflicts that caused the blockage.
The most telling detail remains financial: according to Burkina24, Burkina Faso is not receiving any participation fee or share of the ticket revenue. An African team crosses the Atlantic, fills a stadium for the sporting anniversary of a global star, and returns empty-handed. This imbalance is not inevitable: it is negotiated, contract after contract. The continent's federations, which legitimately demand more space in the international calendar, would benefit from also demanding their fair share of the value they create.
At the time of this article's publication, the FBF had not communicated a definitive departure time.
This article was written in French with the help of artificial intelligence from the sources cited below, then translated from French automatically. Read the original.
