KEIR RADNEDGE in MOSCOW: World federation FIFA has surprisingly appointed a refereeing trio from Senegal for the second round knockout tie between Belgium and Japan in Rostov-on-Don on Monday night.

Refereeing chairman Pierluigi Collina was firm, in a media briefing on Friday, in standing up for the quality and independence of referees to run any match involving teams from any country or any confederation.

However Senegal’s Malang Diedhou and assistants Djibril Camara and El Hadji Samba have been placed in a delicate situation after the manner in which Japan edged out the African nation’s team in Group H.

Colombia won the group and Japan and Senegal finished level on points, goal difference, goals scored and mutual result (a 2-2 draw). Hence it was on fair play rules that the Japanese edged into second place despite losing their last game 1-0 to Poland. Decisively they had incurred two fewer yellow cards than Senegal.

A chorus of whistles and jeers erupted from the 42,189 spectators in Volgograd after the last 10 minutes were played out at walking pace. Coach Akira Nishino admitted later that he told his players to accept the 1-0 defeat, knowing that would be sufficient.

Nishino said: “It was just the situation that forced me to make the risky call and we decided not to go on the offence and rely on the other match.

“I’m not too happy about this but the World Cup is such that these things happen and we went through so it was perhaps the right decision.”

The danger of the decision by FIFA – and Collina – to appoint a Senegalese refereeing trio for Japan’s next game concerns the worldwide fall-out in case of controversy over their decisions.

This is not to impugn the competence of Diedhou and his colleagues but to ponder the reason for FIFA putting them under extra, unnecessary pressure.

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