November 23 – Two referees and one linesman have been suspended for three months and publicly criticised by African football’s ruling body while another has been warned following their performances in recent World Cup qualifiers.
Ghanaian Joseph Lamptey was barred after the Confederation of African Football (CAF) deemed he wrongly awarded South Africa a penalty in their 2-1 win over Senegal on November 12.
Kenya’s Davies Omweno was also banned following his performance in Tunisia’s 1-0 win over Libya as was his assistant Berhe O’Michael of Eritrea for denying Libya a valid goal by flagging for offside.
The public shaming of the match officials is extremely rare in international football but CAF’s get-tough approach could be linked with possible match-fixing which has been rife throughout the continent.
CAF said Lamptey, who has already served a six-month ban for wrongly awarding a goal during a CAF Champions League semi-final in 2010, “awarded a wrong penalty for handball despite the fact that the ball never touched the hand of the player”.
Omweno was criticised for “wrong positioning and movement, incorrect identification of fouls and failure to administer some disciplinary sanctions” while O’Michael was sanctioned for “offside decisions including one denying a valid goal by Libya”.
The other linesman in that match, Rwanda’s Theogene Ndagijimana, was given a warning by CAF which said he “missed multiple basic offside decisions” which “denied promising attacks”.
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