Opinion

Refereeing “famine” in Africa

 

By: Sonia Atti

Humans may seek perfection in everything, but they are fully aware of the difficulty of achieving that, and that relativity is often the basic rule.

This rule does not exclude football, despite its popularity and the countless numbers of its fans. Take refereeing as an example; the lovers of football cannot prevent refereeing mistakes that often change the destinies of teams and clubs, dooming them to lose, and thus causing sadness and frustration for the fans.

We can say that they are just inadvertent or deliberate mistakes that cannot be avoided. Here, we return to the theory of relativity mentioned at the beginning of this article. There is no 100% clear result, and mistakes are part of the game.

This applies to most countries in the world, but when it comes to Africa, you have to review the rules of football again and you will discover that you are wasting your time because you are in a continent that has its own rules that do not comply with the FIFA’s.

The refereeing mistakes in Africa are fateful. No one can change it, and there are many reasons for that. There are those who bribe the referee, or perhaps he is a friend of some official in the Confederation of African Football (CAF).
The scandal recently revealed by a Ghanaian journalist, showed that there were dozens of CAF officials who were set to be bribed. He exposed them in media outlets.

The Libyan national team has frequently been a victim of such mistakes. Despite the bad circumstances that Libya experiences, it remains a controversial team in the continent. The reasons may be unknown, but the results were clear in more than one championship.

For clubs, we remember the match between Al Ittihad and Medeama SC of Ghana within the African Confederation Cup, where the referee made many mistakes, contributing to the Ghanaian team’s winning.

The Libyan national team and clubs may be exposed to such refereeing mistakes owing to the absence of any Libyan representation in the international sports bodies, which makes it difficult to defend their rights.

Some will say the conspiracy theory occupies my mind, and we blame the others for our failures. Our response is that we have just mentioned the tip of the iceberg, not to mention the poor reception, abuse and disturbance at hotels, and other factors that occur in Africa.

Even if we resort to the VAR which was recently developed in various countries, it will also be in the hands of the same referees, some of whom are honest, nevertheless.

The current level of African football in international competitions confirms our theory in this article. Despite the richness of human resources and talents, the African continent is still outdated because of the low-quality refereeing. I know that it happens everywhere but we are the most place affected by it. If we managed to solve this problem, we will be the kings of this game someday, and we will celebrate the titles and glories.

Related Articles

Back to top button