On a late afternoon on August 7, Wuxi Wu Hook Football Club delivered an urgent letter to the CFA revealing the baffling miscues they experienced in the 17th round of the Central League. An obvious goal was overlooked by the refereeing team at the match venue, an obvious blunder that sparked an unfair controversy. The club strongly demanded that the FA take strict measures against the referee involved.
In a letter, Wuxi Wu Hook detailed the crucial showdown with Shanghai Jiading Huilong in the 17th round of the 2023 Chinese League season. The team scored the crucial goal in the 48th minute of the Aug. 5 away match. The ball struck the underside of the crossbar before miraculously bouncing into the net, the entire ball having crossed the goal line.
However, due to the lack of video replay and video refereeing mechanism in China's first division, the officials of Wuxi Wuhu made public for the first time the video of the goal taken by a cell phone. Nonetheless, the duty referee, assistant referee and fourth official did not respond to the goal or confirm its validity.
For further confirmation, Wuxi Wu Hook made public a video of the moment the goal was scored. The video clearly shows that the ball did enter the goal after hitting the lower edge of the crossbar and crossed the goal line. At that time, the score was 1-1. If this goal had been taken into account, Wuxi Wuhu could have equalized the score with Zhang Yuanshu's free kick to take a 2-1 lead, and the game situation could have shifted in the team's favor.
However, the goal was not counted and the trend of the game was reversed. 83 minutes later, Shanghai Jiading Huilong's Jefferson scored a header to make the final score 2-1. 17 consecutive rounds of unbeaten streak of Wuxi Wuhu was broken.
Faced with this unfair result, Wuxi Wu Hook was deeply indignant. Although the result of the match could not be changed, they still made their demands to the CFA. On the one hand, they asked the CFA to penalize the duty referee team, and on the other hand, they suggested the CFA to strengthen the selection and training of referees to ensure that every referee would give their best in the match to maintain the fairness and impartiality of the match.
This season, as a newcomer in the Central League, Wuxi Wuhu did not perform well. Factors such as hasty promotion to the first division and insufficient reinforcements led them to only 3 draws and 14 losses in 17 rounds of matches, scoring 6 goals and conceding 34, with a total of only 3 points, ranking at the bottom of the league and becoming the focus of relegation.
