FKF-KPL duel leaves poor referees taking flak for all bad calls

In the 2002 World Cup, football giants Italy went to South Korea as one of the favourites. With a galaxy of stars led by poster boy Francesco Totti, the Azzurri - pooled with Croatia, Mexico and Ecuador in Group G - were expected to go all the way. But Alas! The script didn’t go according to plan.

In their second match against Croatia, Italy lost 2-1. Nothing extra-ordinary here. Right? But it’s the manner in which English referee Graham Poll officiated the game that created an uproar in world football.

Italy had led through a Christian Vieri header in the 55th minute and looked to be cruising to victory before a late Croat revival. Ivica Olic pulled the Croats level in the 73rd minute before Milan Rapaic stunned the Italians four minutes later.

Italy thought they had grabbed an injury time equaliser but the effort was ruled out by the referee, apparently for a foul by Filippo Inzaghi. The same official had also disallowed a 50th minute Vieri goal through offside.

Later, Vieri accused Poll of being “a village referee”. But worse was to follow. In their Round of 16 clash with co-hosts South Korea, the Azzurri were clearly “robbed”, if you are an Italian fan that is.

Ahn Jung-Hwan scored a 117th-minute golden-goal winner, but it was referee Byron Moreno of Ecuador who would achieve infamy at the game. He ruled out a perfectly good Italian goal prior to Ahn’s winner and sent off Totti for a perceived dive. South Korea won 2-1, crushing Italian hopes.

Refereeing has always been a sensitive subject the world over. And in the 2015 Kenyan Premier League (KPL), the poor standards of officiating are worrying.

One referee admitted that he denied one team two clear penalties because he feared for his life. Why? That the fans of the opposing team, who have a history of hooliganism, intimidated him. What hogwash!

BAFFLING PROCEDURES

The Referees Appointment Board was disbanded in January this year at the height of the KPL-Football Kenya Federation (FKF) feud and has not been reconstituted. The referees were part of the weapons in the arsenal of the FKF machinery in the war against KPL.

Reports of baffling procedures in the appointment of referees; extortion and bare knuckle but muted in-fighting between officials of the two bodies has for long been whispered. Now it is shouted brazenly from the rooftops for all and sundry to hear. It is too loud and murky to be ignored; soiled underpants are exposed to the world: “Why should we recruit, train and grade referees and then let someone else make the appointments?”

That is how the FKF Head of Technical Committee, Elly Mukholwe, responded to the question of why the federation is unwilling to allow the country’s Fifa accredited referees to officiate the top-flight league.

“They (KPL) have chosen to do things without the approval of the federation; we shall see how far they can go. And it is really laughable that club chairmen are writing letters to complain about officiating standards, yet they were here when Fifa explained that referee appointment is the sole jurisdiction of the federation.

Mukholwe dared the KPL managers.

He did not stop there: “I am telling you that of all the referees currently officiating the top-flight, I know very few of them. And those are the ones who have been recalled from retirement, and others actually failed the Member Association tests we had last year. Ask them. None of them has undergone the mandatory Performance Endurance Test.”

Mukholwe spoke gravely about the “arrogance” of KPL management and shared what he termed an “abusive” text message from KPL’s GMT Ottieno sent to FKF that occasioned his suspension from the board early this year. He was in the mood of a war he must have felt sure he was winning.

That is one side of the story. The other side felt different and had its own justification. In an equally scathing rejoinder for his part, Ottieno fearlessly states that the federation led by Mukholwe has succeeded in intimidating the country’s crème of referees, and continues to milk money from unsuspecting but aspiring referees in the name of training.

“If we are using referees who are not credited it is because someone (Mukholwe) from FKF has made it impossible for us to do it any other way; he has left us no alternative,” Ottieno said and added some salt to the injury: “He is someone who has never been involved in football matters.

“He has never been a referee, he has never been a player and he has never been a coach, I even doubt if he has ever been a fan of football! What does he know about refereeing? The federation is making a lot of money in the name of training referees; yet Mukholwe only appoints people from his ethnic community and friends," Ottieno told Sunday Nation Sport in a recent interview.

Ottieno went further to name one Fifa-accredited referee, a Caroline Wanjala, who had trouble explaining how she earned the badge and how many top flight matches she has since officiated.

This ping-pong of accusations has been brought to the fore by the grumbling that are going on in the country’s top flight football due to poor officiating. It is only five months since the 2015 season kicked off, but centre referees and their assistants have worn more criticism from fans, pundits and club chairmen than they had been subjected to in the entire 2014 season. 

First up was the much publicised match between Gor Mahia and Sofapaka at the Nairobi City Stadium where Burundian Abdoul Fiston Razak made a challenge on Liberian defender Dirkir Glay from K’Ogalo in the middle of the match. The referee, Raphael Nduati, inexplicably gave both the aggressor and the victim yellow cards and set up a howl of anger from K’Ogalo fans.

During the same match, there was the ball-to-hand incident where Abouba Sibomana‘s hands were met in an unnatural position by an incoming cross at the restricted area, something that should have attracted a sure penalty but the incident seen by all in the stadium amazingly escaped referee Nduati’s eyes.

It is the match between the defending champions against 2010 champions Ulinzi Stars two weeks later that brought refereeing properly under the microscope. Apart from several awkward calls throughout the match, referee George Mwai shocked the entire stadium by stopping the match twice to allow for substitutions. “The intensity of the match was breath taking,” he later confessed to this writer.

The standard of play was as exhilarating. It was a showpiece that featured no shortage of arresting hooks and points of interest but when it was time for post-match analysis, there was plenty to discuss with regards to the quality of judgment during the match.

Ulinzi coach Robert Matano referred to Mwai as “bogus” and one who cannot preside over even a Division One league match, and it is after this that the focus on referee ineptitude intensified.

Bandari coach Twahir Muhiddin as well as Ingwe coach Zdravko Logarusic have also since publicly voiced criticism on the same.

EXPRESSED CONCERN

What followed is that FKF – the same federation that is withholding referees from officiating KPL matches – wrote a letter to KPL governors expressing their “concern” with the increasing grumbles about poor officiating in the top-flight.

The KPL chairman Ambrose Rachier understandably wrote back to request for the reconstitution of the Referees Appointment Board; an appeal that judging from the battle stance taken by the likes of Mukholwe will not happen in the near future.

The sabotage of KPL is still underway when we glean at some facts from Fifa rules. Fifa is indeed aware of the current goings-on, and that the country faces a fresh threat of sanctions from the world football governing body; the most unpleasant prospect being the nullification of all KPL results on the grounds that the referees who supervised them were not Fifa accredited.

Fifa rules are clear that appointment of referees is the sole jurisdiction of the highest football governing associate in the country. That the federation, in this case FKF, should recruit, train and monitor referees’ performances, and they are then expected to work in conjunction with the league managers in determining which referees preside over which matches. Fifa is also clear that a country’s top flight league must be presided over by officials accredited by them.

There are four stages in the appointment of referees. It begins with a recruitment session where prospective candidates are examined by doctors to detect any health complications and more importantly, the condition of their heart. They are then taken on different runs depending on the different responsibilities (different for centre refs and the assistants) where their fitness levels are gauged.

Those who pass this stage are then taken to class where they learn two major concepts: Game analysis (trivia) and The Offside Rule. Upon completion, the referees are allowed to preside over a lower cadre match and their performance assessed before they are given the go ahead to take charge of a top flight league.

The abnormal situation in the current top-flight is that the federation won’t let go of the Fifa-accredited referees. The federation has deemed it fit to sabotage the top-flight and bring it to its knees. This is a situation that leaves the league body with no choice but to go against the stipulated rules and use unaccredited officials. Meanwhile, the players are still suffering.