Refereeing : Debates Spur!

South Africa's Bafana Bafana coach, Hugo Broos, insisted his team's 0-1 defeat to Egypt on match day 2 of the TotalEnergies Africa Cup of Nations resulted from unfair refereeing. “The game was decided by two decisions. The first was a penalty against Salah ; it is really funny when you give a penalty for such and you go to the VAR to verify and still decide to give a penalty. The second was also a penalty that was not given to us. The arm was extended from the body, the ball hit his hand, and now suddenly there is something like a ‘supporting arm’ rule. I never heard about it. Well, FIFA makes so many rules these days that nobody knows anymore what to decide,” Coach Hugo Broos underlined.  Amid a brave performance, Broos felt his side was robbed by referee Pacifique Ndabihawenimana and his VAR team.
But what really happened? The Burundian referee, after consulting VAR and the pitchside monitor, awarded the Pharaohs a penalty. He ruled that Khuliso Mudau’s flailing arms blocked Salah during open play inside the box, justifying a foul and the penalty. He did not stop there. Ndabihawenimana first deemed Yasser Mahmoud of Egypt guilty of a foul just outside the box when the ball hit his arm mid-slide. However, after a prolonged VAR review for a possible penalty, he had to check the pitchside monitor. He did so and overturned both the free kick and penalty claims from the South Africans.
Again, visibly frustrated after the 0-1 loss to Algeria, Burkina Faso’s captain, Bertrand Traoré did not mince his words against the officials, highlighting that they ruined the game with some controversial decisions. Back to day one, a VAR malfunctioning was reported in the match that pitted Benin against the Democratic Republic of Congo, that denied Benin a potential penalty that could c...