Picture Credit: Twitter
A video has been going viral on various social media handles of a footballer who missed a penalty in an uncharacteristic manner. We all have seen missed penalties but in this clip, the player shoots a spot kick in the exact opposite direction of the goal. This follows an incident captured where the goalkeeper from the same appeared to do little to nothing to save the penalties.
The game was the final of the Ogun State FA Cup final in Nigeria between Remo Stars and Ijebu United. The match ended as a draw and ended in the favour of Ijebu 3-0. But after the game, the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) launched a probe into allegations of match-fixing following the bizarre penalty shoutout.
A source close to Remo Stars owner Kunle Soname, said that the club decided to lose the shootout in protest at the perceived poor treatment of the club by the Ogun State FA and consistent controversial calls from the referee.
“Our club has been constantly treated poorly by the FA, and we did not even want to enter for this competition but we were prevailed upon to enter for it. At the final, the referee made some dodgy calls, even denying us what was a clear penalty kick,” the source said.
“That was the last straw for us, and we decided we would not play the penalty shootout and they should simply give us the silver medals for second place. But they told us we had to play or we could be disqualified for not concluding the game and putting the game to disrepute. So we said we could play, but playing does not mean we have to score.”
Similarly, Remo Stars secretary Michael Onikute talked about this incident to Goal and said, “Well, first on the allegations of match-fixing, this is totally false. What I can deduce from the social media posts is that some individuals are trying to get much attraction by posting the [penalties] video with the word match-fixing because they know it would alert the football world.”
“You will also see that they never presented a concrete explanation about the game rather than match-fixing. That shows the level of unprofessionalism of such journalists involved in the propaganda. If indeed the match was fixed, we would not have streamed the game live on our social media channels.”