Johannesburg – Thousands of South African football fans and Bafana Bafana players will take comfort knowing that the man in the middle for the contentious
Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) final this evening will be a South African.
An almost southern African team of match officials will be led by respected and experienced World Cup referee Victor Gomes as the whistleman taking charge of the much-anticipated final between Senegal and Egypt at Olembe Stadium in Yaounde at 9 pm.
The Confederation of African Football (CAF) has also appointed fellow South African Zakhele Siwela, who will be assisting Gomes, along with Lesotho’s Souru Phatsoane and DR Congo’s Olivier Safari Kabene.
Gomes becomes the first SA referee to officiate an Afcon final match, a reward for his consistency.
Even finalists Egypt were vouching for Gomes to handle their temperamental semi-final match against the host Cameroon as they believed Gambian referee Bakari Gassama would be biased in favour of the host nation as he was also from West Africa.
The Egyptian Football Association demanded that Gomes be the man in black for the encounter and perhaps they were in some way right, but their pleas fell on deaf ears.
The state of affairs is that Egypt will be without head coach Carlos Queiroz and assistant Roger de Sa on the bench for today’s final after former Bafana coach Queiroz was sent off by Gassama during the explosive semi-final, ending in a 3-1 penalty victory for The Pharaohs.
De Sa was suspended and fined together with several Egyptian and Moroccan players after their quarter-final encounter ended in fistic cuffs.
Back home, Bafana failed to book a berth to the 33rd edition of Afcon when sacked head coach Molefi Ntseki failed to guide the senior national team to the finals in the last hurdle in March last year, following a disappointing 2-0 defeat to Sudan.
The former Under-20 national team coach Ntseki was however not the first choice for the Bafana job, given that Safa missed out on their targets who were either unavailable or pricey.
Ntseki left the hot seat after a year-and-a-half at the helm after taking over from his predecessor Englishman Stuart Baxter. Ntseki was replaced by the astute 69-year-old Belgian mentor Hugo Broos in May last year.
It is now history how Broos’ efforts to take South Africa to the Qatar World Cup in November this year was scuppered by Senegalese referee Maguette N’Diaye’s pathetic handling of that World Cup qualifier with Ghana.
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