Nigeria’s football community is feeling a mix of frustration and disappointment after the Confederation of African Football (CAF) announced their list of referees for the upcoming Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) 2023, in which Nigeria is noticeably absent.<\/p>\n
The organisation released its participating officials on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
This development has sparked debate and generated worries regarding the country’s presence and influence within CAF, despite the fact that the country will formally compete in Africa’s most important football competition scheduled for January.<\/p>\n
Surprisingly, lesser-known nations such as Lesotho, Djibouti, and the Comoros have made an appearance on the renowned list, raising more doubts and eyebrows among Nigeria’s football community.<\/p>\n
Nigeria has a long history in African football and has constantly been a force to be reckoned with in international tournaments. A notable deviation from the norm is the absence of Nigerian referees from the AFCON 2023 list. Nigerian referees are frequently regarded as seasoned and competent professionals who make a positive contribution to both the playing field and game officiating.<\/p>\n
According to Segun Gbadebo, a football enthusiast, “Nigeria’s absence from the CAF referee list for AFCON 2023 presents an opportunity for introspection and reform within the country’s football landscape.”<\/p>\n
Centre referees, assistant referees, video assistant referees (VAR), technical instructors, physical trainers, VAR technicians, and IT support are all on the CAF roster.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nigeria’s football community is feeling a mix of frustration and disappointment after the Confederation of African Football (CAF) announced their list of referees for the upcoming Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) 2023, in which Nigeria is noticeably absent. The organisation released its participating officials on Tuesday. This development has sparked debate and generated worries regarding […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1911,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175],"tags":[59],"class_list":["post-1910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-featured"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1910"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1910\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1912,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1910\/revisions\/1912"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}