Mamelodi Sundowns co-head coach Manqoba Mngqithi was not happy with the “very, very poor” performance by the referee in his side’s 1-1 draw at Baroka.
Masandawana looked like they had secured a hard-fought three points at Baroka on Monday, but a last-minute strike by Richard Mbulu saw them drop two points at the Old Peter Mokaba Stadium.
After the match, Mngqithi was quite furious with the officiating, questioning several crucial calls of the match official.
“It’s football, sometimes you see things that you thought you’d never see,” he told SuperSport TV.
“Rushine [De Reuck] and an opposition player go for a header, Rush gets a yellow card and he goes out. They are not treated, Rushine needs to go out and stay outside, the opposition player must be inside.
“That was the first incident, the second incident: AJ [Andile Jali] is being fouled with an elbow – the referee instead of giving us a free-kick because that’s a foul, the ball is an opponents ball. It’s appalling.
“But nonetheless they pilled a lot of pressure on us in the second half. We did not create too many chances in this game, we relied on set pieces. We could see that the game was going to demand that a lot, because the field is very narrow and they made sure they pile a lot of pressure on us and we could not create clearcut chances.
“But that is not an excuse, I feel we deserved to win the match and unfortunately we conceded a last-minute free kick where I don’t even know whether it was a free kick or not but credit must be given to them, they gave it a fight.
“We have to take this point away from home, it still counts for something. We cannot just take it as if we lost the match – we haven’t lost the match.
“But the referee was very poor today, very, very poor. I still want to see whether [Erwin] Saveedra was offside when he played that ball to Peter [Shalulile] because from where I was sitting I thought it was never an offside.
“But in football you must accept those decisions because maybe one day they favour you, maybe one day they favour somebody else.”
Sundowns now turn their attention to CAF Champions League football, facing both Al Merreikh and Al Ahly in Egypt over the coming 10 days.
