SAFA president Danny Jordaan detailed a comprehensive formal complaint made to FIFA following Bafana Bafana’s controversial World Cup qualifier defeat to Ghana, adding there were numerous reports before the game that Ghana would be awarded two penalties.
Chief among the calls made by Senegalese referee Maguette N’Diaye was his dubious decision to award Ghana a penalty for an alleged foul on Daniel Amartey, which ultimately resulted in Andre Ayew scoring the match-winning goal from the spot.
N’Diaye’s performance was widely criticised following the match, with former leading referee Ace Ncobo claiming that he got 89.3% of his decisions wrong to South Africa’s detriment during the first half of the match.
Those statistics are being used as part of SAFA’s formal complaint to FIFA and the association’s president Danny Jordaan has called on world football’s governing body to also investigate allegations of spot-fixing.
Jordaan detailed the process the association took to formally protest Sunday’s result and its in-depth formal complaint.
“Immediately after the completion of the match in Cape Coast, Ghana I think there was an outpouring of emotion in our country,” Jordaan said.
“I then phoned the CEO Tebogo Motlanthe who was at that time with the match officials. I then asked him to go and approach the match officials and inform them that we are going to challenge the outcome of the match and specifically we are concerned with certain decisions in the match.
“So we’re going to ask for an investigation into match manipulation of this match.”
Jordaan went on to detail the different processes that FIFA introduced in recent years to curb corruption in football.
“FIFA has a responsibility to protect the integrity of all of its competitions and that is a responsibility that arises from the FIFA statutes,” Jordaan added.
“In February 2017 FIFA decided to strengthen the integrity of global football when it entered into an agreement with a company called Sports Radar.
“Now Sports Radar is appointed to monitor each FIFA competition and every match, where the monitoring of matches is part of a preventative strategy.
“Our duty as SAFA is to recognise first whether there is any bias that we can prove against our team and then report any match manipulation to FIFA.”
Jordaan then made damning allegations that there were further advantages to Ghana winning the game outside of football.
“There was betting on the match. It is a fact that there was betting on the match,” Jordaan added.
“We want FIFA to investigate this also. What happens in betting, if you know in the 10th minute the referee is going to give a penalty, then there is a betting spike just before the penalty is given.
“If that happens, if the betting spikes coincide with the decision, then you know. But, how is it that there is a betting spike just before a major decision is taken? So they knew when to bet because it’s online betting, so you watch the match and you watch the match because you have the information.
“We don’t have the capacity to do that [investigation] so we have asked FIFA to do that.”
“This match was a very decisive match, where Ghana only had one option but to win.
“If Ghana loses this match, there will be major socio-economic problems even for the president of the country.
“There were also other numerous reports stating that Ghana would receive two penalties or at the very least one.
“Then also that this is a must-win match for Ghana, now these things could be just patriotic reporting but we have also asked this to be investigated.
“As we know this was an extremely decisive match and anything other than a win would be enough for Ghana to qualify.
“So we are asking FIFA to investigate all of these things for the integrity of the competition.”
