Patrice Motsepe calls for revival of CAF elite professional refereeing panel

One of the reasons for the successful implementation of the VAR at the 2023 AFCON in Côte d’Ivoire was the programme to professionalise referees, which has since been discontinued.

Speaking during yesterday’s visit to Morocco as part of the efforts to mediate the fallout between them and Senegal, Motsepe says the events of the AFCON final point to the need for the panel.

"My brother Fouzi [Lekjaa, CAF vice-president and Royal Moroccan FF president] was discussing with me, we started an excellent partnership with FIFA to professionalise African referees," said Motsepe.

"And it really proved their skills and expertise, and made them world class, and Gianni Infantino played an important role from FIFA and we did it from CAF, and that process was stopped – I didn't know about it.

"I asked Gianni, why was this things stopped? He said, 'I don't even know myself.' But this was one of the issues that the chairman of the referee's committee raised when he came to give us a report.

"Because the CAF Exco asked him to give us a report of the assessment on the performances of the referee and VAR on the day of the final match of the Total Enegies CAF AFCON Morocco 2025."

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CAF frequently hosted high-level preparatory workshops in Cairo, Egypt, for these elite referees, focusing on technical skills and VAR application for quarterfinals, semi-finals, and finals of continental tournaments.  

Motsepe says the professional standards of match officiating they had started need to be revised. 

"I'm never going to make promises that I cannot keep, neither am I going to make undertakings which cannot be fulfilled overnight or in the short term," he continued.

"The fact are [that] there's good progress that has been made, concerning governance, transparency, the quality of refereeing and improvements – but we've lost a bit of that.

"And I think it's partly because of the professionalism partnership we had, which was not continued – Infantino didn't know about it and neither did I. 

"So it is important that when there are deficiencies and difficulties that we recognise them, but you need to do more than that and take effective corrective measures."