Egyptian referee watched replay on smartphone – alternative to VAR! True, now banned

In the Egyptian league, the referee came up with a budget version of the VAR technology, but the efforts were not appreciated – now it is generally unknown when he will judge

And here’s what happened.

The referee canceled the goal after watching the replay on the phone

Egypt has its own Al-Nasr – it plays in the country’s second strongest league and is in the relegation zone in the table. A few days ago, he went to visit the middle peasants of the tournament – the Suez club.

Situation: Al-Nasr loses 1-2 at the end of the match and scores a goal. Perhaps by hand. It’s not easy to recognize from a video on Twitter.

Referee Mohammed Farouk immediately finds himself in a dense ring of Suez players. He himself is not sure that the goal was clean, but there is no VAR in the Egyptian second division.

What did Faruk do? I took the phone from a fan (according to other sources, my own) and looked at it for a repeat.

And then – canceled the goal, fixing the game with his hand. Then he added 15 minutes to the match, during which Suez scored the third goal and won 3:1.

Farouk left the field accompanied by police. Now Al-Nasr players pressed him, and officials threatened to sue him.

Referee suspended, but there will be no replay

The referee committee of the Egyptian Football Association did not like Farouk’s creativity – the referee was suspended for an indefinite period, and the incident will be investigated.

By the way, the committee is headed by the Portuguese Vitor Melu Pereira, who worked for half a year as head of the refereeing department of the RFU – left it in March 2022. In Egypt, less than a month has passed since his appointment, and he replaced Mark Clattenburg.

Al-Nasr on social networks called the incident a scandal.

“We were surprised by Farouk’s move,” a spokesman for the club said. “This has never happened in the history of either Egyptian or international football.” Suez, however, did not display this episode at all in their video report on the match.