Lamptey issue still smoulders

It is now more than two months since Fifa’s shock revelation that Joseph Lamptey (above), the referee in charge of Bafana Bafana’s shock 2-1 World Cup qualifying win over Senegal, had been banned for life.

The “crime”, intimated by the Fifa ethics committee, was that Lamptey was guilty of manipulating the outcome of a number of games, culminating in the crucial Bafana-Senegal clash in which he awarded South Africa a penalty for handball after the ball had clearly struck one of the Senegal players on the knee – as well as delivering other dubious decisions.

Despite an outcry in Senegal that has since followed in the wake of Fifa’s action, football’s world controlling body has stonewalled all requests for clarification over the possibility of a replay with the evasive comment that the Lamptey issue had yet to be finalised in its entirety.

And the latest request to Fifa on the hot potato issue has once again come up with the same largely unanswered response.

Meanwhile, Safa are equally steadfast in a response, insisting that Fifa at no stage had directly informed them about Lamptey’s life ban – let alone on the possibility of a replay of the Senegal game.

“In the circumstances,” said Safa head of communications, Dominic Chimhavi, “we have continued to regard the question of a replay as a non-issue, while focusing our attention on Bafana’s remaining qualifiers for next year’s World Cup in Russia under new coach Stuart Baxter”.

But until Fifa clears the air, one way or another, the smouldering issue will continue, with the assertion that with so much smoke billowing, there is the prospect of there being a fire as well.