The Confederation of African Football (CAF) announced today, Friday, its official decision regarding the controversial events in the match between Tunisia and Mali on Wednesday evening in the 2021 African Cup of Nations currently being held in Cameroon.
The match ended with Mali’s 1-0 victory at Olympia Stadium in the first round of Group F matches in the African Championship. The decisions of the match referee sparked a state of widespread controversy, which prompted the Tunisian Federation to lodge an official protest with CAF.
CAF issued an official statement today on its website, saying, "The Organizing Committee for the Total Energies Championship, the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations, Cameroon 2021 met today to discuss the Tunisia-Mali match that took place yesterday, January 12, 2022. After reviewing Tunisia's protest and the report of all match officials, I decided The organizing committee stated the following:
- The protest of the Tunisian national team was rejected.
- The match result was approved 1-0 in favor of Mali.
An arbitration scandal occurred in the Tunisia-Mali match
😱 The referee announced the end of the match before the end of the original time on two occasions D85 and D89 #African Nations_Cup |
#Tunisia_Mali#TotalEnergiesAFCON2021 |
#AFCON2021 pic.twitter.com/auyygNQPHc
— beIN SPORTS (@beINSPORTS) January 12, 2022
arbitration scandal
The match witnessed what was described as an "arbitration disaster", the hero of the Zambian national team, Jani Sikazwe, who managed the match, as he decided suddenly to end the match in the 85th minute, before deciding to complete the match after the opposition of the technical staff of the Tunisian team led by coach Munther Al-Kabir.
Sikazwe repeated the same thing again, after he finished the match 10 seconds before the end of the original time, declaring Mali's 1-0 victory without declaring the calculated time instead of lost, despite the meeting stopping for several minutes to review the VAR technology.
The technical staff of the Tunisian national team objected to the referee's decision after he blew the final whistle, but Sikazwe insisted on his decision to remove the referees and the two teams from the stadium.
A few minutes later, the fourth referee, Helder Martins de Carvalho, returned to the match, with assistants, to resume the match without Sikazwe, so that the Malians returned to the field to play the remaining time, but the Tunisian team preferred not to return to resume the match, according to the official website of the CAF.
Munther Al-Kabeer described Sikazwi's management of the match as "inexplicable."
Mali won the match with a single goal, scored by Ibrahima Kony from a penalty kick in the 48th minute.
After play resumed after the 85th minute, Bilal Toure was expelled from the Mali national team in the 87th minute, before the referee blew the final whistle with 13 seconds remaining at the end of the 90th minute.
The second half of the match witnessed more than one stop, including two long pauses to return to the video assistant referee system (VAR) when calculating the penalty kick for the Mali team, as well as calculating a penalty kick for Tunisia, which Wahbi Khazri missed the opportunity to score in the 77th minute.