Controversy at the African Cup of Nations after the anticipated end of the game Tunisia vs. Mali

The Africa Cup of Nations (CAN) football was stained this Wednesday chaos and controversy: Mali-Tunisia (1-0) ended earlier than it was due for a wrong arbitration decision that angered the Tunisians, who later refused to return to the pitch when they were called upon to close the duel.

“His decision is inexplicable, he did not understand it,” said the Tunisian coach, Mondher Kebaier. “We are going to see the decisions that come now,” he added in a statement that promises actions by the Tunisians to appeal the result of the match.

The Zambian referee Janny Sikazwe was in this way the controversial protagonist of the day in Cameroon.

Tunisia is exposed to a sanction for its refusal to resume the game.

“The players were in the ice bath for 35 minutes” and “They asked us to come back,” protested the Tunisian coach.

The referee whistled twice at the end of the game before the corresponding moment. In the first instance stopped the game in the 85th minute, apparently by mistake.

After visibly turning that premature whistle into a cool-down pause, the referee ordered the game to resume.

But stopped him a few seconds from the end of the 90th minute, even before the start of an eventual added time.

This time it was the entire Tunisian delegation who expressed their anger, with coach Mondher Kebaier frantically waving his watch in front of the referees.

The referee quartet should have left escorted by security from the Limbe stadium to the wrath of the ‘Eagles of Carthage’.

Close to a half an hour later, the game seemed at times that it was going to resume. The Malians returned to the field of play to play the last seconds of regulation time and a possible extension. But Tunisia remained in changing rooms.

“He deprived us of seven or eight minutes of additional time and we played eleven against ten” since the expulsion of Malian El Bilal Touré (minute 87), protested the Tunisian coach.

“I have been in football for almost 30 years and I have never seen a situation like this,” he said.

Mali took the 1-0 victory thanks to a penalty converted in the 48th minute by Ibrahima Koné.

Mauritania, no anthem

The Mali coach Mohamed Magassouba explained that his team was asked to return to the field game and that he followed that slogan.

“They told us to return to the field of play because the game was not over. Unfortunately, the other team did not want to return and then the final whistle was decided ”, he summarized.

The zambian Janny Sikazwe is curiously an experienced referee. He dictates justice in his fifth Africa Cup and also participated in the 2018 World Cup in Russia.

In the past he was accused of corruption by the Angolan club Primeiro de Agosto after a match full of arbitration errors against Esperance of Tunisia in November 2018. He was later acquitted by the Disciplinary Commission of the African Football Confederation (CAF).

The Mali-Tunisia controversy caused the next match in Limbé within the first day of that group F, between Mauritania and Gambia, will start late, but also with controversy, although of less intensity.

Mauritania started the second African Cup in its history without being able to hear its national anthem, since the people in charge of the public address confused it with an old hymn of the country.

In the game, the Mauritanians were defeated 1 to 0 by Gambia, who enforced the goal of Ablie Jallow (minute 10).

At group E, Ivory Coast is the first leader thanks to its 1-0 victory over Equatorial Guinea in Douala, with a goal from Max-Alain Gradel (minute 5).

The victory was crucial for the Ivorians within group E, in which they are placed as the leader. Algeria and Sierra Leone, the other members of the key, tied each other on Tuesday. (D)