New York- As a football fan and an African, I can’t help but express my frustration at the dirty way in which the African Football Federation handed an undeserved qualification to the semifinals of the African Cup of the Nations to Equatorial Guinea rather than Tunisia. This is a real scandal.
When you lose a game because you didn’t play well, you can’t help but accept it. But when you lose it because the referee might have followed the orders of African Football Federation (CAF) President Issa Hayatou, you cannot accept it.
As a football fan, I was excited to watch the quarterfinal of the African Cup of Nations, which was held on Saturday between the host country Equatorial Guinea and Tunisia, one of the two representatives of North Africa.
However, I should admit that I was disappointed by the low-quality of play during this year’s Cup of Nations. Still, I could not help but watch most of the games.
When the match started, I was fearful that the something was going on behind the scenes to offer the people of Equatorial Guinea and its dictator an historic gift, bearing in mind that Equatorial Guinea had never made it to semifinals of the competition.
The first sign that caused me to be wary was the identity of the 45-year-old referee, who has become notorious for his disastrous refereeing over the years in Africa. One only has to remember the match he officiated in 2011, which pitted Morocco against Algeria and tilted in favor of the Algerians. Every football fan remembers how he influenced the match in a way that made things clearly easier for the Algerians.
My fear was compounded by the fact that Equatorial Guinea is due to hold presidential elections this years. Bearing in mind the corruption that is polluting every sector of life in Africa as whole (and Sub-Saharan Africa in particular), I was afraid Issa Hayatou had given the referee instructions to ensure Equatorial Guinea qualified for the semifinals, thereby boosting the president’s popularity with this “historic” performance just few months before the presidential elections.
The catastrophe that was the game confirmed that my fears were not unfounded. Tunisia played their best match of the tournament, and did their utmost to win a ticket for the next round. But to their dismay, they realized that they were not only facing the host team, but also a referee who was waiting for the slightest physical contact between the Tunisian players and their rivals to give Equatorial Guinea a penalty kick.
The Tunisians scored their first goal at the 70th minute, and held on to the lead to the 90th minute. As most viewers around the world waited for the referee to blow the final whistle of the game, he awarded a controversial and dubious penalty kick to Equatorial Guinea.
I was so shocked by the referee’s decision that I started looking around on other channels to see what people were saying, and whether my judgment of the decision was wrong. Every football specialist said that the penalty kick was given to Equatorial Guinea unjustly. From the way the referee led the game, it was obvious that his intention was to qualify the host country regardless of the ethics.
Not only did he offer the host the penalty kick that allowed it keep the game going and force extra time, but he also gave them a controversial free kick that allowed Javier Balboa to score the second and winning goal for his team.
The one scene that struck me after Equatorial Guinea scored the tying goal is when Issa Hayatou appeared to be cheering for the host country. At that moment, I realized that no matter how well the Tunisians would play during extra time, the game would tilt in favor of the Equatorial Guineans.
This shameful episode of the African Football Federation comes as a reminder that Africa will never make any progress as long as corruption and a lack of ethics corrupt it to the core. As one analyst at beIN Sports channel said after the match, the CAF just gave the West a new reason to laugh at us.
Africa is not backward because of other countries. It is backward because it is led by heinous and corrupt people like those managing its football body. How can we expect a person that has been heading the CAF since 1988 to manage African football in a clean and ethical way? The longer Issa Hayatou remains at the helm of African football, the less clean football will be played, and we will see more situations like today. Issa Haytou now behaves like that a dictator. And accordingly, he believes that he is above the law and can make any decision that he sees fit.
For African football to make progress and to live up to its fans’ expectations, it needs a new blood, as well as the establishment of the culture of accountability. We all have witnessed how Issa Hayatou dismissed all the arguments presented by Morocco to postpone the Cup of Nations because of the Ebola pandemic, and how he did all he could to find a last minute replacement host. What we witnessed today was the best way for Issa Hayatou to thank the President of Equatorial Guinea for graciously accepting to host the 2015 Cup of Nations.
I think it is time for North African countries to mobilize and work toward removing Issa Hayatou from the CAF.
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