The South Africa Football Association (SAFA) is set to lodge a complaint to both CAF and FIFA for their 2022 World Cup qualifier against Ghana to be replayed.
South Africa are unhappy with the performance of Senegalese referee Ndiaye Maguette after he awarded the Black Stars a penalty, that was converted by Andre Ayew as Ghana reached the play-offs.
SAFA CEO believes the defeat to Ghana was caused by the Senegalese referee Maguette Ndiaye which ended the country's dreams of playing at the 2022 World Cup.
“We approached the match commissioner and informed him of our intention to lodge a formal complaint to CAF and Fifa about the questionable officiating during the match,” said Safa CEO Tebogo Motlanthe after the match.
“It was not only the incident of the penalty, it was not in isolation and we will commission an expert in the form of a retired referee to analyse the performance of the referee. We will use our World Cup qualifying match against Senegal in 2017 that was replayed to put our argument forward,”
According to Motlanthe, his outfit are gathering information to prove the game was fixed.
“We believe Saturday’s match was fixed and we are collecting information to prove our case. We are well informed that Ghana knew that they were going to get a penalty, it was a question of when, and this confirms our suspicions. We want to thank and compliment these young Bafana players for the commitment they have shown to the country. They fought very hard and unfortunately it was spoiled by the referee. But we will continue to support the boys emotionally because they are gutted,” Motlanthe added.
Ghana's narrow win enabled them to reach the 2022 World Cup play-offs by the narrowest of margins, eliminating South Africa at the top of the group on goals scored.