‘I Think God Told Me To End The Match’- Referee Sikazwe Opens Up On Erratic AFCON Performance

The FIFA referee caused controversy when he blew for full time five minutes early before restarting the game and ending it once again 13 seconds before the full 90 minutes were up.

Sikazwe says he was badly affected the weather conditions of the day and could even have died of heatstroke.

Mali won the game 1-0 but Sikazwe had to be escorted from the field by aggrieved staff of the Tunisia national team.

"I have seen people going for duties outside the country and come back in a casket," Sikazwe told Zambian media after arriving in his home country.

"I was very close to coming back like that.

"I was lucky I didn't go into a coma. It would have been a very different story.

"The doctors told me my body was not cooling down. It would have been just a little time before [I would have gone] into a coma, and that would have been the end.

"I think God told me to end the match. He saved me."

"The weather was so hot, and the humidity was about 85%," he added.

"After the warm-up I felt the [conditions] were something else. We were trying to drink water but you could not feel the water quenching you - nothing.

"But we [match officials] believe we are soldiers and we go and fight.

"Everything I was putting on was hot. Even the communication equipment, I wanted to throw it away. It was so hot."

"I started getting confused. I could not hear anybody," he said.

"I reached the point where I could start hearing some noise and I thought someone was communicating with me and people were telling me 'no you ended the match'. It was a very strange situation.

"I was going through my head to find who told me to end the match. Maybe I was talking to myself, I don't know. That is how bad the situation was."

Sikazwe took charge of the 2017 AFCON final between Egypt and Cameroon while he officiated two games at the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia.