A surprising turnaround. This Thursday, January 8, around 10:30 p.m., CAF officially revealed the name of the referee for the CAN 2025 quarter-final between Cameroon and Morocco. While several local media had put forward the name of the Egyptian Amin Mohamed Omar to lead the game, a change was made in the evening and it was finally the Mauritanian Dahane Beida who was chosen, ending a day of speculation.
At the origin of the chaos: the denunciation by the FRMF (Royal Moroccan Football Federation) of the delay taken by CAF in appointing referees for the quarter-finals, as reported by several Moroccan media including Le Matin. Indeed, less than 48 hours before the start of the first matches, no communication had yet been made official by the body governing the competition this Thursday morning.
A behind-the-scenes fight between Fouzi Lekjaa and Samuel Eto’o?
What’s next? The revelation of the name of Amin Omar, which provoked some worried reactions from several supporters of the Atlas Lions on social networks, as did the presumed appointment of the Algerian referee Mustapha Ghorbal, once cited to officiate during the match between Mali and Senegal, as VAR referee for the Morocco match.
“We are so screwed”, “We are dead”, “What is the point of putting an Algerian to referee Morocco or a Moroccan to referee Algeria apart from creating big controversies, knowing all the diplomatic problems etc…”, we could notably read on by Walid Regragui.
According to several independent journalists, such as the French Romain Molina or the Algerian Dean Ammi, a battle took place behind the scenes all day between Fouzi Lekjaa, the president of the FRMF and Samuel Eto’o, the president of Fecafoot, the Cameroonian federation, each wishing to weigh in on the name of the referee. CAF finally made a decision in the evening, appointing Dahane Beida as main referee and removing Amin Omar and Mustapha Ghorbal from the refereeing body.
Worth a look
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