By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
South African Football Association (SAFA) president Danny Jordaan has put pressure on FIFA’s disciplinary committee to make a decision regarding their complaint.
SAFA has protested against Senegalese referee Maguette Ndiaye’s handling of Bafana Bafana’s crucial World Cup qualifier against Ghana earlier this month after the official awarded a controversial penalty and appeared to favour Ghana in most on-field decisions.
A verdict was expected on 23 November, however, Jordaan revealed that the world’s leading football body has still not communicated with SAFA.
“What is the date today? It is 28 November, isn’t it? The question is, why have they (FIFA) not even communicated with us? Why?”
SAFA are claiming match-fixing may be involved, citing video analysis of Ndiaye’s officiating, where there were clear mistakes.
“The statutes of FIFA say they must protect the integrity of their competitions,” continued Jordaan.
“So, I think the matter has become more serious now. Ghana initially said our protest was frivolous.
“It is really strange that a federation attacks another in the manner they did. It is strange that they held a press conference and they attacked SAFA.
“But the thing is, we never accused them of anything. We wanted the referee, Maguette Ndiaye, to be investigated.”
Meanwhile FIFA’s President Gianni Infantino, speaking at the extraordinary general assembly of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) in Cairo, Egypt, said that VAR (Video assistant referee) will be in use for the final stage of the continent’s qualifiers.
Bafana Bafana have been hard done by dubious refereeing decisions in two qualifiers, over the past three months. On one occasion, TV replays showed Percy Tau scored what looked like a legitimate goal, and it was disallowed. On another occasion, South Africa lost a match after a dubious penalty was awarded against them.
The bad news for the 10 countries who are through to the final stage is that host countries, in line with a decision by CAF, must have VAR available for matches. Countries who are unable to comply will forfeit home advantage and the match will be played at an alternative venue.
As it turns out it is unlikely that any of the 10 countries (Algeria, Tunisia, Nigeria, Cameroon, DR Congo, Mali, Egypt, Ghana, Senegal and Morocco) will have VAR available. CAF will likely move all the two-legged matches to a VAR-equipped country like Qatar.
“The final stage of the African World Cup qualifiers will see an improvement in refereeing performance due to the use of VAR,” said Infantino.
The latest development has no doubt come about because of complaints by the South African Football Federation and Benin Football Federation, who tabled reports about farcical refereeing in the final group stage matches. The two referees at the heart of the storm were Gabon’s Eric Otogo-Castane and Senegal’s Maquette N’diaye.
Both cases are in the hands of FIFA’s disciplinary committee, and their decision is eagerly awaited.
With inputs from Danny Jordaan’s interview with The Times.