Editorial: Shame on you AFC

When they flew to Syria to set up a deciding last home game against Kuruvchi they thought they would only have to fight against eleven opposite players, but that wasn’t enough, they also had to fight against an entire refereeing team and against an entire team behind the team.

AFC had hand-picked a team of referees from Syria’s neighbour Jordan to take charge of the game. Sepahan coach Jorvan Viera had expressed his concerns prior to the game that for obvious reasons the wrong referees had been picked for the crucial game. In his worst nightmare though he couldnt have expected two disallowed goals, 25 simulated injuries, about 50 yellow cards that were not given and only four pathetic minutes added in the second half.

Let’s not start with what everybody saw was a 100 % correct and onside goal scored by Seyed Salehi, but with the countless many times the ball was kicked or thrown away by the Syrian team after the whistle had been heard. This action, to kick the ball away on purpose of delaying the opponent free kick or throw in should according to the rules of the game be dealt with by giving out a yellow card. The referees totally ignored these bahaviours throughout, not to mention all the times the players simulated injuries, which also should be punished with a yellow card. The countless many simulated injuries and the many substitutions during the second half gave only an unbelievable four minutes of stoppage time, for what should have been a number of minutes closer to 40 than 4!

Worst of all though was the onside goal scored by Seyed Salehi who everybody including the assistant referee saw was onside, since the attacker was clearly onside before and long after the shot by Abolheil was taken, and hence never close to an offside position, still though the goal was disallowed for an offside created by the assistant referee from Jordan. Not long after yet another Sepahan goal was disallowed for offside, the TV pictures couldn’t for sure tell whether it was or not, however Mr Fanaei, who was one of the linesmen in 1994 World Cup, claimed on the Iranian TV that it was likely to be onside rather than offside after watching the pictures more closely.

Sepahan was robbed a quarterfinal place, a place in the last eight they fully deserved, and would have reached if they would have rightfully won tonight. What AFC or no one else though can take away from this campaign is the amazing progress and development of rising star Ehsan Hajsafi. The 18 year old looked out of this world for a 17-year-old Iranian just months ago, now he’s even better, better than sensational and better than the biggest Asian talent out there…

"We scored two correct goals and the referee denied us the lead early in the game which affected the players," said Vieira.