South Africa Football Association President Dr. Danny Jordaan has taken a dig at the Ghana Football Association whiles reacting for the first time to the GFA’s response to their (SAFA’s) protest lodged with FIFA.
The protest in question involves the South Africa versus Ghana final World Cup group qualifier played at the Cape Coast Sports Stadium.
Ghana won the game by a goal to nil, but the South Africans insist that the award of the winning penalty was one of several dubious decisions the referee of the day awarded against them and in Ghana’s favour.
In an interview on Tuesday evening with ace South African journalist, Robert Marawa, Jordaan said SAFA cannot be dictated to by a GFA that was only a year in office, in reaction to Ghana’s stern response asking FIFA to dismiss their protest.
“You cannot be schooled by a primary school teacher when you are a university professor. We have organized a World Cup. It was voted the best ever World Cup on the African continent. We cannot be schooled by people who are just in their first year in administration and so we kept quiet.”
He stressed:
“… it is our democratic right to exercise the provisions and the statutes to exercise our rights and as we said, it was Senegal’s democratic right to look at the statutes and exercise their options.
“And no federation must cast aspersion when a particular federation to exercise their right. What they have to do is to submit proposals to amend the statute to say, no, nobody must question any decision of any match, just leave it.
“But while those provisions are there, it is in our right to exercise it and we are exercising it on behalf of the federation, on behalf of the people of our country and we will not apologise to anybody for exercising our democratic right,” he added.
South Africa have petitioned FIFA that given the conduct of the referee for the day with respect to the award of a penalty that decided the match, there is the need for a replay of the fixture at a neutral venue and for referee Maguete Ndiaye to be sanctioned.
@SAFA_net President Dr Danny Jordaan responds to the Ghana FA retort regarding South Africa falling short on the procedural elements of their submission to @FIFAcom on #MSW @VumaFM @SowetanLIVE @RISEfm943 pic.twitter.com/ksZx00h6hX
— robertmarawa (@robertmarawa) November 30, 2021