Robin van Persie and Haemeur Bouazza. Two players who share the distinction of being the recipients of red-card fouls from Osei Sankofa. And, whilst there were no ripples of news spreading out from the incident with the then-Watford forward (after all, most lazy hacks would think “Osei Sankofa” and “Haemeur Bouazza” were just poor hands in Scrabble), the incident with Arsenal’s Dutch player (who is not a rapist) has had repercussions spreading from East London to Sheffield, via the courts.
Sankofa was dismissed for a foul on van Persie (the “Dutch Bryan Hughes”), during Arsenal’s 4-0 thumping of the Addicks in January, ’07. Cesc Fabregas’ goal-bound effort was brilliantly tipped onto the bar by Scott Carson, but fell kindly to van Persie, who was offside when the initial strike was made. Sankofa clumsily barged over the Dutchman and referee Mike Riley pointed to the spot and sent Sankofa off, despite the presence of Talal El Karkouri which meant that Sankofa was not the last defender.
Riley’s errors of fact gave Charlton enough ammunition to request that the FA rescind Sankofa’s red card and his one-match ban. The FA, however, decided that the appeal was “frivolous” and doubled Sankofa’s punishment to a two-match suspension.
Thus, a player who should not even have had a foul called against him was red-carded, awarded a penalty against him and had a ban imposed and then doubled.
Charlton chose to take matters further and queried the decision in the high courts. But the judge, Justice Simon ruled that the FA had the right to make its own decisions on footballing matters and that any cases where the courts should be involved would be “wholly exceptional”. So, there you have it. The FA can do pretty much what they like and it is very unlikely that the courts would ever intervene.
This ruling was to resonate disastrously a few months later when the FA’s ridiculous handling of the Wet Ham/Carlos Tevez case was not reviewed for the reason stated by Justice Simon in the Sankofa case.
Factoid: he’s a pretty good defender, better on the right than the left, but he can’t throw.