Nigerian referees are good, but the best officiate at AFCON —CAF Refereeing Head

Head of Refereeing Confederation of African Football (CAF), Desire Noumandiez Doue, has said Nigeria referees were not selected for the 2023 African Cup of Nations (AFCON) because they are not the best.

Speaking at the training session of the CAF referees at Sol Beni (ASEC Mimosas Training Centre) in Abidjan on Thursday, Doue said it is important for Nigerian referees to do their best to meet the CAF standard.

According to the Ivorian referee, he said Nigeria have good referees but they still need to come to CAF competitions.

There were worries among football lovers after CAF snubbed Nigerian referees for this year’s AFCON as over 85 referees, comprising centre referees, assistant referees, Video Assistant Referees (VARs), technical instructors, physical trainers, VAR technicians, and IT support are involved in the competition.

According to Doue, “You have good referees in Nigeria but this is our message to them, they need to come to CAF competition, especially to the AFCON.

“We don’t need good referees, good referees are for the MAs, good referees are for the zone, in CAF we need the best, so Nigerian referees are good but they can still improve and they need assistance. They need to do more to be among the best because the selection started one and a half years ago, so we are in a continuous process of scouting, evaluating and selection.

“You know we have different stages, you start from young talent, then you go elite B, and after that, you proceed to elite A. Then you go professional among the best and it’s among the elite A we picked from AFCON,” he said.

Speaking on the performance of the Video Assistant Referee (VAR), the referee boss admitted that they are doing everything to perfect the process of VAR.

“Presently, nobody can’t learn from us, we are just trying to do our best, you know all the leagues are different, the approach is different, the philosophy is different and the understanding is different, we are concentrating on our league and we are trying to do our best. We know we still have space for improvement because this is a continuous learning process, we know we have challenges and we need to have space for improvement and we will continue to do that.

“We are glad to hear the feedback about the success of VAR at AFCON because we are always happy because it was not like this before, we are very happy but at the same time, we know that this is for the moment as we need to keep the standard of our performance that is why are continuing to work hard.

“People should not praise us for now until after the competition, because when we make a mistake, all of us feel this mistake and when a referee is doing good all of us feel happy, that is why we will continue to work as a group.

“This is just a step, the competition is still on, we still have challenges after this competition, so for us is not to stop now and say yes we did great, no.”

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