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South Africa’s hopes of advancing into the final round of 2022 World Cup Qualifying were snuffed out on Sunday night when they lost 1-0 to Group G rivals Ghana at the Cape Coast Sports Stadium.
The result – secured by a highly-debatable penalty scored by Andre Ayew – left the Black Stars and Bafana level on 13 points and with the same goal difference.
But the West African side’s extra goal (7 to 6) through the course of six group matches proved the key tie breaker to send them through to the playoffs in March next year.
"tt was not our day today. We are disappointed. We carried you, in our hearts South Africa. We fought hard. We wanted a World Cup as badly as you did. From all of us - THANK YOU for the belief and support along this journey," tweeted Bafana Bafana on its official twitter handle.
On Monday morning, the South African Football Association announced that it would be lodging a formal complaint to the Confederation of African Football CAF and governing body FIFA.
SAFA CEO Tebogo Motlanthe says the match officials decided the outcome of the match and that is not the way things should be done.
Speaking ahead of Bafana's departure from Cape Coast on Monday morning, Motlanthe said they feel they owe it to the players to challenge the outcome of the match as they honestly feel they were robbed.
"We have ticked all the boxes and will be holding a media briefing on Wednesday when we get home."
He said it was not only the awarding of the penalty that irked the team but a number of other questionable decisions as well.
Motlanthe said SAFA was extremely disheartened by Sunday night's developments and felt it prudent to act immediately as they don't want the result to destroy their players.
