A member of the Egyptian FA has blamed the mammoth crowd for the inability of their players to play to their potential and questionable calls made by the referees during Egypt’s 1-1 draw with Nigeria.
The AFCON 2017 qualifiers game saw over 50,000 people crammed into the 25,000 Ahmadu Bello Stadium and that according to a member of the Football association in Egypt unsettled both the referee and their players.
“Our players played with fear, the crowd was intimidating to say the least, when we came out for warm up our players were busy looking at those on the floodlight and scoreboard, it was scary” He told owngoalnigeria.com.
“In the dressing room we had players asking us if the security can protect them if they win as the crowd was way too much even the referee was moved by it, he was heavily intimidated and it was all because of the crowd.
“He made so many questionable calls that went against us but we on our part understand that only a mad man won’t favour a team with such amount of supporters”.
