When Daniel Laryea was selected to handle the Ashanti derby between Asante Kotoko and Ashantigold during Week 28 of the Ghana Pemier League I thought that he was the best man in black for this huge match but in reality, after the game, the FIFA referee disappointed me and many others for his poor officiating performance.
First of all he failed to punish Kofi Mensah, the Ashantigold goalkeeper who deliberately came out of his penlaty box to deliberately handle the ball off the feet of Kotoko’s Emmanuel Gyamfi. It was an obvious goal scoring opportunity and at worst a freekick should have been awarded to Kotoko but Mr. Laryea shockingly did not.
Did he forget?
If the referee indeed forgot this basic law of the game, then that would have been scandalous for a referee of such high reputation in Africa to commit such officiating blunder.
Unless the current laws of the game in place has changed to justify why Daniel Laryea did not award a freekick to Gyamfi and why he did not book the culprit goalkeeper, I still maintain that this was a horrible mistake for a man carrying a FIFA badge to make. I am not saying FIFA referees are saints. That is not the point. But if you wear a FIFA badge and seen as the best referee in the country, then your mistakes must be acceptable but this was not the case.
The Wahab Adams penalty incident was a no case for me because replays have shown that indeed the Kotoko defender made contact with the ball when he slid to clear the danger off Seth Osei of Ashantigold so that was a no case. There was no penalty in my candid opinion.
But again what was worrying was some of the decisions of the referee. The freekick he awarded Cristopher Nettey was the one that infuriated Thomas Duah the Ashgold coach. That was not a foul.
Daniel Laryea made several of these decisions that marred the overall beauty of the game and he must improve in his next games.
We recently watched the UEFA Champions League final between Manchester City and Chelsea and we saw what high level officiating means from the Spanish referee Mateu Lahoz.
