The Confederation of African Football (CAF) is set to look for a new system to end the drawing of lots to separate teams that finish level in the African cup of Nations tournament groups after it was used to send Mali home from the Africa Cup of Nations on Thursday at the expense of Guinea in Group D.
"We have to stand by the regulation but also think about how we improve it," said CAF media director Junior Binyam. "It's not fair to have a team going out like this. It really is the worst decision - to have to make a decision this way - because everybody expected it would be decided on the field."
The situation arose after both Mali and Guinea drew 1-1 in all three Group D matches. A representative from Guinea and Mali picked balls from a bowl. Mali's football association president Boubacar Diarra went first and pulled out the ball that placed them third in the group.
Guinea will now play Ghana in Sunday's quarter-final in Malabo."The gods of football fortune smiled on us. It has been a long road up to now," Amara Dabo, financial director of the Guinea Sports Ministry, who participated in the draw, told Reuters.
This isn't the first time that fixtures have been settled in a non-footballing manner in the tournament. In 1972, Congo progressed from the group stages after 'winning' the drawing of lots ahead of Morocco and then went on to win the competition. In the 1988 Africa Cup of Nations, Algeria profited at the expense of Ivory Coast after the drawing of lots.
A crazy as it seems regarding the prizes on offer, this sort of thing has happened in European football. For instance, the European cup, now the Champions League, used the toss of a coin to select the “winning” side.
In 1964-65 European Cup had actually seen a few of these random deciders, with Anderlecht progressing after drawing 0–0 with Bologna in play-off. Dukla Prague vs. Gornik Zabrze was decided with rotating currency; the former team "prevailing" on both occasions.
Shankly’s Liverpool took on Cologne in the quarterfinal stage, but both legs ended 0-0. In the playoff on the neutral ground of Amsterdam Liverpool took a 2-0 lead through Ian St John and Roger Hunt but the German side came back to level things at 2-2. A coin toss was thus employed, which Liverpool captain Ron Yeats would call correctly, sending them through to the semi-final, where they lost to eventual winners Inter Milan.
But by far the most important and high-profile occurrence was the semi-final of the 1968 European Championships. After the semi-final match Italy and Russia the Italy captain Giacinto Facchetti called correctly and they went through to the final to beat Yugoslavia 2-0 in a replay.
It seems absurd today, with the enormous amounts of money at stake in the beautiful game that progression in a tournament can be decided by non-footballing means. I don’t know what the answer should be, but I know one thing as a lifelong football fan, that fate or luck or the throw of the dice should never be used to decide who beats who. I would struggle to accept it if England were knocked out of the World cup in this way. Come on FIFA and all the other federations, get together and find an answer quickly, before it happens to us.
Source: DSG
