{"id":52548,"date":"2026-02-10T14:01:35","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T13:01:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dzwatch.dz\/?p=52548"},"modified":"2026-02-10T14:01:35","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T13:01:35","slug":"why-mustapha-ghorbal-will-not-referee-the-afcon-final","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dzwatch.dz\/?p=52548","title":{"rendered":"Why Mustapha Ghorbal will not referee the AFCON final"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Former international referee Mohamed Zekrini praised the performance of referee Mustapha Ghorbal during the match between Egypt and Ivory Coast in the Africa Cup of Nations quarter-finals, while ruling out the possibility of him officiating the tournament&#8217;s final.<\/p>\n<p>In a statement on Sunday, Zekrini emphasized the difficulty of appointing Mustapha Ghorbal to lead the Africa Cup of Nations final, pointing the finger at &#8220;parties within CAF who do not want us to be strong in all fields.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Zekrini added: &#8220;Everything that happened with the national team and the refereeing farces witnessed in the Nigeria match, the same will happen with our referees.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The refereeing expert considered Ghorbal officiating the continental final &#8220;possible in only one case, which is if the finalists are Nigeria and Senegal, but this remains very unlikely,&#8221; according to him.<\/p>\n<hr\/>\n<p><em>Reference: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sabqpress.dz\/%d9%84%d9%87%d8%b0%d8%a7-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%b3%d8%a8%d8%a8-%d8%ba%d8%b1%d8%a8%d8%a7%d9%84-%d9%84%d9%86-%d9%8a%d9%8f%d8%af%d9%8a%d8%b1-%d9%86%d9%87%d8%a7%d8%a6%d9%8a-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%83%d8%a7%d9%86\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">link<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Former international referee Mohamed Zekrini praised the performance of referee Mustapha Ghorbal during the match between Egypt and Ivory Coast in the Africa Cup of Nations quarter-finals, while ruling out the possibility of him officiating the tournament&#8217;s final. In a statement on Sunday, Zekrini emphasized the difficulty of appointing Mustapha Ghorbal to lead the Africa &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":52547,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"rank_math_lock_modified_date":false,"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","iawp_total_views":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dzwatch.dz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dzwatch.dz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dzwatch.dz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dzwatch.dz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dzwatch.dz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=52548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dzwatch.dz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52548\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dzwatch.dz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/52547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dzwatch.dz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dzwatch.dz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dzwatch.dz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}