Egypt referees need time to improve, says Gamal El-Ghandour

Egyptian Football Association referees development manager Gamal El-Ghandour says officials need time to correct what he describes as “fundamental issues” with their understanding of the laws of the game.

El-Ghandour said the current referees committee had only begun working on 2 August, less than three weeks before the Egyptian league season started.

“The current working group in the referees committee met on August 2, while the league started on August 20 or 21, so are they supposed to perform a miracle?” he told Al-Nahar channel.

“I’m not going to be a liar and say that I’ve changed everything, and I’m not going to exaggerate and tell you that I’ve turned the world upside down. We need time, and everyone needs time.”

El-Ghandour said the committee identified a lack of confidence among referees and several misconceptions about the laws when it took over.

“Unfortunately, we didn’t find anything positive,” he said.

“The referees lacked confidence in themselves, and there were many misconceptions among them. Is it true that 75% of the referees failed the law test? Yes, that’s a fact.”

He also said there were fundamental problems despite the previous referees committee being led by former FIFA referee and lecturer Oscar Ruiz.

“The former head of the referees committee is a FIFA lecturer, a big name, and has participated in the World Cup more than once, but we found that there were fundamental issues in refereeing,” El-Ghandour said.

“There were certain concepts that were not present, or the concepts about them were wrong.”

El-Ghandour also defended the committee’s approach to analysing controversial refereeing decisions, saying disagreements among its members were normal.

“We also follow a teamwork approach,” he said. “It is not necessary for the ten or 12 people to agree on the decision. There are certainly differences.”

He explained that members could reach different conclusions over the same incident before the committee arrived at its final position.

“I may see a penalty kick in one situation, while three, four, nine or 10 people see that it is not a penalty kick, but in the end there is a decision for the administration,” he added.

El-Ghandour rejected suggestions that the committee could show favouritism when selecting incidents for public analysis.

“If I were going to be favouritistic, why would I come out and say this in the first place? I could have simply not come out and spoken from the beginning,” he said.

He added that the committee would focus on genuinely controversial incidents rather than analysing every refereeing decision.

“The cases are clear, so there is no need for us to go out and analyse them,” he said.

“We will not go out and analyse everything that is clear to the public. The cases that we will not discuss are the cases in which we agree with the referee’s decision.”

El-Ghandour said the committee already conducts detailed internal reviews and presents a much larger number of incidents to referees.

“If I were to present all the cases, there would be no need for me to do this at all,” he said.

“I could bring the analysis I do, in which I present more than 50 cases to the judges, and present it live on air.”