There are few matches in which the referee is the undisputed first star, and this is what happened with the Zambian referee, Jani Sikazwe, against Tunisia and Mali in the African Nations Cup in Cameroon.
This ruling caused great chaos due to controversial and incomprehensible decisions, and the British newspaper “Daily Mail” traced the history and career of Sikazoe to find that he was suspended due to corruption allegations in 2018.
The Confederation of African Football (CAF) suspended Sikaze on suspicion of corruption, after the way he managed a match in the African Champions League between Tunisia’s Esperance and Primeiro Augusto of Angola.
Esperance beat the Angolan team 4-2 in the second leg of the continental championship semi-finals at the Rades International Stadium, but Sikazoui awarded the Tunisian team a controversial penalty, from which came its opening goal, before canceling a goal for Agusto due to a mistake on the Esperance goalkeeper.
The decision of the AU Disciplinary Council was based, at the time, on the fact that “there is good ground for a hearing on the allegations of corruption against Sikazwe”.
“Sikazwe has been provisionally suspended from all football activities related to his tournaments, pending a hearing before the CAF Disciplinary Board,” the decision reads.
The temporary suspension was imposed by CAF in November 2018, but it was lifted by FIFA in January 2019.
This Zambian referee had officiated two matches in the World Cup Russia 2018, which are Belgium against Panama, and Japan against Poland.
It is noteworthy that the first round of the group stage of the Nations Cup was accompanied by an arbitration disaster, its champion Sikazwe, who managed the Tunisia-Mali match, as he suddenly decided to end the match in the 85th minute, before deciding to complete the match after the opposition of the coaching staff of the Tunisian national 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 victory with a clean goal without declaring the calculated time instead of lost (estimated at 7 minutes), despite the meeting stopping for several minutes to review the VAR technology ( the mouse).
The Tunisian technical staff objected to the referee’s decision after he blew the final whistle, but Sikazoui 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 with his assistants to resume the match without Sikazoe, 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 what was confirmed by the official website of the CAF.