The International Football Association “FIFA” rejected on Saturday the appeal submitted by his Algerian counterpart to replay its match against Cameroon in the 2022 FIFA World Cup qualifiers, stressing that “the file has been closed.”
The Desert Warriors won 1-0 in Cameroon but lost 2-1 in the second leg to fail to qualify for the Qatar World Cup.
On March 31, the Algerian Federation announced that it had submitted an appeal to FIFA and requested a replay of the match due to the “scandalous arbitration” of Gambian referee Bakary Gassama.
But the FIFA Referees Committee rejected this request, according to a mail published on Saturday by the Algerian Federation.
“We regret that, according to your assessment, the referees’ decisions may have a negative impact on the course of the match. (…) All incidents that occurred during the match were carefully scrutinized by the VARs, in accordance with the Laws of the Game and the VAR Protocol,” the committee said.
In contact with Agence France-Presse, FIFA confirmed that the Algerian Federation submitted a complaint to the disciplinary committee of the international body and requested to obtain the observations of the referees committee.
“FIFA has responded to the Algerian federation on these two issues and the file is considered closed,” a FIFA spokesperson told AFP on Saturday.