'We have been cheated': Egypt slams FIFA after loss to Argentina

Members of the Egyptian squad slammed the officiating in their loss to Argentina, accusing the referees of bias toward the Argentine side.

What happened: Egyptian midfielder Mostafa Zico told a reporter after the match that the game was not fair.

“No fair. No fair. Referee no fair,” he said in English, before describing the game as an “injustice” in Arabic.

“Congratulations. The World Cup is for Argentina,” he added, implying that officials wanted the defending champions to win.

Egyptian coach Hossam Hassan accused FIFA of wanting to keep Argentine's star player Lionel Messi in the tournament for “marketing” purposes and called the match “rigged” in remarks to reporters.

“I do not want to put it nicely and talk about hard luck. We have been cheated unfairly today; we have suffered injustice,” he said.

Hassan struck a calmer tone in a statement on X after the match, saying, “Our development will not stop here, and we have many big goals ahead of us.”

The coach is known for being outspoken and called on FIFA to use the sport’s “soft power” to help the Palestinians on Monday.

FIFA has taken action against teams for criticizing officiating in the past. It banned and fined Indonesia’s coach in 2012 for suggesting that referees were bribed.

The calls triggered outrage on Egyptian and Arab social media. Egyptian commentator Wael al-Emam accused FIFA head Gianni Infantino of wanting Argentina to win.

Background: Zico’s goal in the 58th minute would have doubled Egypt’s 1-0 lead against the reigning World Cup champions, but a video assistant referee (VAR) check determined that Egypt’s Marawan Attia had fouled Argentina’s Lisandro Martínez before the goal.

But the foul that prompted the referee to overturn the goal was made while Argentina were on the offensive — meaning play had already moved in the other direction and might preclude a referee from disallowing the opposing team’s goal. Some argued that such a sequence falls outside the phase of play that VAR is typically permitted to review, fueling criticism that the intervention exceeded the technology’s intended scope.

Egypt later doubled its lead in the 67th minute, but Argentina scored three goals in the 79th, 83rd and 90+3 minutes. Had the goal stood, the outcome of the match may have been different.

Later, after Enzo Fernandez scored Argentina’s final, decisive goal to win the match, replays showed that Argentine midfielder Alexis Mac Allister had fouled an Egyptian player as Egypt were on the attack before Fernandez’s goal.

Know more: The incident is the latest flashpoint in a broader debate over VAR’s role at this World Cup. Critics argue that the technology — introduced to correct clear and obvious errors made by the on-field referee involving goals, penalty decisions and red cards — has increasingly been used to scrutinize marginal infractions that would have previously gone unnoticed, disrupting the flow of matches and undermining referees’ judgments.

Similar criticism followed Portugal’s win against Croatia in the Round of 32, where VAR and FIFA’s Connected Ball technology disallowed Croatia’s stoppage-time equalizer after sensors detected an almost imperceptible touch in the buildup, resulting in an offside call that eliminated Croatia from the tournament.

Accusations that the World Cup scales are tilted toward the Argentine squad and soccer superstar Messi have become a popular refrain throughout the tournament. Some soccer fans on social media on Tuesday pointed to the penalty awarded to Argentina in the 21st minute as further evidence of such bias, though the penalty was saved by Egyptian goalkeeper Mostafa Shoubir.