Egypt’s football association will make a formal complaint to Fifa about the performance of referee Enrique Caceres during their World Cup loss to Russia.

Egypt’s hopes of a place in the knockout stages ended with a 3-1 loss to the hosts in St Petersburg.

They claim Ahmed Fathi was pushed before he scored an own goal to give Russia the lead, and they also had a second-half penalty appeal turned down.

Egypt FA president Hany Abo Rida said they had a “right to complain”.

“We want an investigation into the performance of the whole refereeing team,” he said.

Two minutes into the second half, Fathi tried to get in front of Artem Dzyuba to clear the ball, but ended up steering it into his own net to put the host nation ahead.

The penalty appeal came in the 78th minute, with Egypt already 3-1 down, when Marwan Mohsen was bundled over by defender Ilya Kutepov.

“The referee should have used VAR to check and award the penalty. They should have also seen that Fathi had been pushed,” said Abo Rida.

“It is our right to complain and ask for an investigation.”

Egypt play their final Group A game against Saudi Arabia, who have also been eliminated, in Volgograd on Monday.

source: BBC.com