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POPULAR FORMER SENEGALESE REFEREE, SENE BADARA DIES

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BY KUNLE SOLAJA

Sene Badara, a popular Senegalese referee who has officiated across the globe including a couple of matches involving Nigeria, has died.

He died this Monday 22 June at age 73. He officiated the semifinals of the 1990 Africa Cup of Nations in which Nigeria beat Zambia 2-0. He had earlier officiated Nigeria’s elimination of Zimbabwe at the qualification stage.

Some other Nigerian matches he officiated included the 3-0 defeat of Kenya at the group stage of the 1988 Africa Cup of Nations as well as the defeat of Algeria via penalty shootout in the semi-finals.

 

A man of many parts, he is fondly remembered for officiating the final of the 1992 Africa Cup of Nations between Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana. In which a record 22 penalty kicks had to be taken  as tie-breaker.

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He officiated at the 1989 FIFA World Youth Championship (now FIFA U-20 World Cup) in Saudi Arabia and the 1992 AFC Asian Cup in Japan as well as the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul.

After retirement, he spent some time as head of the Referees Department of the Senegal Football Federation before his election as the Mayor of Rufisque, 25-kilometres south-east of the capital, Dakar from 2009 till 2014.

Sene also served as a Vice President of the CAF Referees Committee between 2012 and 2017, as well as a member of the FIFA Referees Committee.

Kunle Solaja is the author of landmark books on sports and journalism as well as being a multiple award-winning journalist and editor of long standing. He is easily Nigeria’s foremost soccer diarist and Africa's most capped FIFA World Cup journalist, having attended all FIFA World Cup finals from Italia ’90 to Qatar 2022. He was honoured at the Qatar 2022 World Cup by FIFA and AIPS.

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