Referee Daniel Bennett faced death threats from Nigerian club Heartland FC’s fans, after a 1-1 draw in the CAF Champions League.
The Sunday Times’ reports that seven “large and angry” Heartland fans barged into Bennett’s dressing-room after the match against Algerian side JS Kabylie six weeks ago in Owerri, shouting: “Phone your family, because you won’t be seeing them again.”
Bennett had officiated — and ruled offside a late Chinedu Efugh effort that would have put the hosts 2-1 up.
“In Nigeria, you don’t take that stuff lightly,” Bennett tells the Sunday Times. “But I and my assistants just waited for help to arrive. If you react or get aggressive in those situations, you have serious issues. You don’t look them in the eye, you just look calm.
The police came in after about 10 minutes of nonsense.”
Bennett officiated the second leg of the CAF Champions League Final between Esperance and TP Mazembe in Tunis on Sunday, and after Mazembe’s 5_0 scoreline in the first leg it should be an interesting encounter.
“Esperance will probably be diving all over the place early on, trying to get a penalty,” he says. “And Mazembe will try time_wasting tactics.
But I know both sets of players quite well, and I’ll have great support from my assistants Zakhele Siwela and Luyanda Somi, and our fourth official, Abdul Ebrahim.”
“They’ll have my back. We’ll deal with whatever happens.”
Source:http://www.vanguardngr.com/2010/11/i-faced-death-threats-in-nigeria-safrican-ref/
No comments:
Post a Comment