BY SPORTSCAST WRITER
HARARE – Zimbabwe’s new football coach Michael Nees has defended referee Adalbert Diouf against accusations of bias by Kenya in the two teams’ Africa Cup of Nations goalless draw on Friday, commenting that it was in fact the East Africans who had tried to influence the Senegalese official by “jumping up and down” at every call.
The 57-year-old German also said Kenya midfielder Austin Odhiambo “dived” inside the box and Diouf was spot-on to wave away the penalty appeal.
Kenya’s Turkish coach Engin Firat fumed in a post-match press conference at the Mandela National Stadium in Kampala that a penalty should have been awarded, adding that Zimbabwe defender Gerald Takwara and forward Khama Billiat should have been sent off through a straight red-card and a second bookable offence respectively.
Nees was quick to dismiss his opposite number’s claims.
“Look, from a caching position, you don’t have the best view, (to see) if the decisions are always right,” Nees told Zifa media on Friday.
“You think you have the best view, so that when decisions are made against your team, you protest – ‘he made a mistake and so on’. But I think he officiated very calmly. The card against Khama was correct, yes, against Gerald, yes. He (Diouf) didn’t over-react because their bench was always jumping up and down at every referee’s decision. He stayed calm. I think the referee had a good game, he didn’t get nervous. One time they wanted to dive for a penalty, but again from a coaching bench’s position, it’s not the best view to really evaluate a referee’s performance. It’s very subjective. He was solid, no mistakes, it was good game for him.”
Meanwhile, Nees – who was taking charge of the Warriors for the first time – hailed the performance of the 34-year-old Warriors forward Khama Billiat, who on his international comeback showed flashes of the form that made him one of the most exciting players on the continent few years ago.
“For me, absolute top-class today,” said Nees, extending the praises to veteran goalkeeper Washington Arubi for an important second-half save.
“He (Billiat) tried to initiate attacks, he helped in defence. I mean, he was a defender in that moment we lost organisation, one defender came to the right side and had actually nothing to do. Khama saw it, he spotted it and made an arrival, and had a professional foul and it was a yellow-card. Yes, the boy is a professional. Washington also, that save. The two old legs I brought, I’m actually happy that I did it.”
After the draw with the Harambee Stars, Zimbabwe will not complete the opening double-header of qualifiers against Cameroon on Tuesday at the same venue in the Ugandan capital.
“First of all, the team performed as a team, they gave everything,” said the German.
“Not too good, not great, but in my opinion good from a defensive point of view. The first task is to recover. Normally you have one session, then full session to refresh. One day before a game you cannot do much. A lot of the training will be in the meeting room, that’s for sure. We need analysis, of course, we need to apply the game intelligence. Sure, we need to improve against Cameroon, Cameroon is of a different calibre.”
