Benin coach blames defeat on referee

Valere Houandinou, head coach for the Young Squirrels of Benin, has accused the center referee who handled their game against the Black Satellites of Ghana for their defeat, saying "African referees always seek to favour home teams in competitive games".

Coach Houandinou, said this in an interview after his side suffered a 3-1 defeat at the hands of the Black Satellites of Ghana, in the first leg of the final African Youth Championship (AYC) qualifier, at the Cape Coast Stadium last Saturday.

“I don’t like commenting on the performance of referees, but our continent has suffered from biased officiating all the time.

“The problem we have in Africa is that referees always give home advantage and that is what happened in our game against Ghana. He was biased and did everything possible to favour the home team.

According to him, they would work on their mistakes to make sure that they overturn the deficit in the return encounter to qualify ahead of Ghana.

Ghana came from behind to beat Benin 3:1 after Benin striker Allagbani Saliou had put the visitors ahead in the 28th minute to end the first half.

Ghana came in strongly with a brace from Richard Danso and a one from Konda to get them closer to the 2019 AYC slated for Niger.