Former Fifa referee and now TV pundit Ace ‘VAR’ Ncobo has revealed some damning statistics behind the controversial refereeing decisions during Bafana Bafana’s recent defeat by Ghana.
South Africa were eliminated from the 2022 Fifa World Cup qualifiers this past Sunday after a narrow 1-0 defeat by Ghana through a controversial penalty scored by Black Stars captain Andre Ayew.
Senegalese referee Maguette Ndiaye was heavily criticised for his decision-making during the match, but the biggest talking point was his decision to award Ghana a penalty after Rushine De Reuck was adjudged to have fouled Daniel Amartey in the box, although replays suggested there was minimal contact between the two players.
Speaking on SuperSport TV on Monday, Ncobo slammed N’Diaye’s decision-making and analysed the footage of the game before he drafted a report, which he submitted to Safa.
“It took me five hours, 17 minutes to analyse just the first half.” 🤯
“89.3% incorrect decisions went against one team.” 👀@AceNcobo comprehensively reviewed the referee’s decisions from the South Africa and Ghana clash. 𝐖𝐚𝐭𝐜𝐡 𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 👇 pic.twitter.com/lbL1lRfAaC
— SuperSport 🏆 (@SuperSportTV) November 16, 2021
“It took me five hours and 17 minutes to analyse just the first half,” Ncobo said on SuperSport’s ‘Extra Time’ show.
“I’m doing the second half only tomorrow because I got the footage this morning.
“Article 18 of the Fifa disciplinary code speaks in detail about manipulation of a match.
“Many people think you can just write to Fifa and say, ‘No, this referee was poor, so let’s replay the match’.
“No, it doesn’t work like that, you have to prove that the result of the match was manipulated.”
He continued: “How do you differentiate poor performance from manipulation, well, this is what I discovered when I analysed just the first half of the match.
“25 out of the 28 [decisions] given went against Bafana. 89.3% of incorrect decisions, leave out the correct decisions.
“And only 10.7% of incorrect decisions went against the home team [Ghana].
“What is a leg that Safa can stand on is that there is a pattern of bias and when you can establish that there is that pattern.
“You can establish that there was manipulation of the result.”
